The Ballard Terminal Railroad (reporting mark BDTL), a short line terminal railroad in Seattle, Washington, USA's Ballard neighborhood, was formed in 1997 to operate trains on three miles of track on the north side of Salmon Bay. The spur had been abandoned earlier that year by the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. BNSF had only three customers when it decided to abandon service in early 1997: the Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel Co., the Olsen Furniture Co., and Western Pioneer Shipping, a fish processing company. Western Pioneer was hit especially hard by the line's closing. To ensure continued service, the companies and other investors formed the Ballard Terminal Railroad, and it began operation early the next year with a 1940s-era locomotive formerly belonging to the Milwaukee Road.
The Ballard Terminal Railroad runs from N.W. 40th Street and 6th Avenue N.W., just south of its Bright Street Yard and on the edge of Fremont, northwest toward Ballard proper. There, it passes the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and runs along Seaview Avenue N.W. to its Shilshole Yard, where it joins the BNSF mainline just north of N.W. 68th Street. Most of the railroad was originally part of the Great Northern Railway's main line, moved to the west when the Lake Washington Ship Canal was built.
The Ballard Terminal Railroad, Co. also operates two other lines. Eastside Rail Freight is a segment from Snohomish to Woodinville, started operations in 2009 on the former BNSF Railway's Woodinville Subdivision. Meeker Southern runs 5 mi (8.0 km) from Puyallup to McMillan, Washington.
Famous quotes containing the words terminal and/or railroad:
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—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)