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When it set out to solve its operating problems on the Sunset Corridor, Union Pacific thought big. Here s what it's up to, and why it matters.
Dennis Duffy knows all about jackpots, jam-ups, and meltdowns. He is, after all, the executive vice president-operations who directed Union Pacific out of its torpor in 1998 after the buyout of rival Southern Pacific turned into an operational quagmire. But even Duffy was stunned one afternoon in late 2003 as he and his wife drove from Phoenix to Tucson, Ariz., on Interstate 10.
? saw trains parked in every siding from Picacho to Stockham-seven of them," he recounted. "They were all trying to get into Phoenix. Talk about a seminal event." Duffy knew things were bad, but actually seeing his railroad trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey overwhelmed him. "I spent the last two days of my vacation back in Phoenix looking at the mess and said, 'That's it!' From then on, every presentation I made about the Sunset Route carried a passion."
Union Pacific didn't have just a Phoenix problem four years ago. It had a Sunset Corridor problem. If anything, El Paso took a bigger beating. Every train through that Texas town has to be refueled and inspected, and there wasn't room enough to do it, so trains spent hours inching in and getting through. On the west edge of the Los Angeles Basin, West Colton was corked like a bottle of Bordeaux-trains were staged as far east as Carrizozo, N.M., waiting for a ticket in. Duffy said the Los Angeles Service Unit recrewed 40 to 50 trains a day.
Eventually the fever blisters subsided, but the Sunset Corridor problem didn't go away. The 818 miles from downtown Los Angeles to El Paso form the core of dûs nations second transcontinental railroad. From El Paso, trains can veer northeast to Kansas City and Chicago (the Tucumcari Route), due east to Fort Worth and the Southeast (the Texas & Pacific Route), or southeast to San Antonio, Houston, and New Orleans (the original Sunset Route). The Sunset directly connects the fiurtestgrowing regions of the country, and Union Pacific was loving it to death, trying push 50 or more trains a day atop an infirastructure sized for rnaybe half...