Tacoma Rail summary
Tacoma Rail (TMBL) is a class III short line railroad which plays a significant role in the intermodal industry out of the Tacoma, Washington area. Officially known as the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line and often referred to as the Muni, it is owned by the city and operated by Tacoma Public Utilities. With 140 miles of former Tacoma Belt Line and Milwaukee Road standard-gauge track, the railroad provides additional services of switching, mainline operations on positive train control territories, class I dispatch operations and light servicing of locomotives.
History
Tacoma Rail began as the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line in June 1927 when a Tacoma City Charter amendment transferred control of the Tacoma Belt Line from the city’s general government to Tacoma Public Utilities. At the time, the original Belt Line was a struggling railroad providing passenger service for workers in the port.
Operations
Tacoma Rail serves more than 60 customers. Crude oil, natural gas and additives represent 35% of the traffic. Intermodal alone accounts for about 34%. Vehicle traffic provides 15%, with 16% going to 57 commercial customers.
Three divisions make up the railroad’s business infrastructure: Tidelands, Capital, and Mountain. The Tidelands Division focuses on the intermodal traffic, along with the oil/additives and vehicle business, and industrial switching. Five miles of “mainline” track and interchange to both BNSF Railway and Union Pacific snakes its way through the busy Tidelands area at the Port of Tacoma.
The Capital Division, unofficially referred to as the Lakewood Division, is where Tacoma Rail holds the freight franchise as a tenant on Sound Transit’s Lakewood Subdivision. Starting at DuPont, freight traffic makes its way north to customers in Lakewood and South Tacoma while sharing passenger traffic with Sounder commuter trains in addition to Amtrak’s Cascades and Coast Starlight.
The Mountain Division is technically a separate operating entity with its own reporting mark, TRMW, which Tacoma Rail uses for customers between UP’s Fife Yard in Tacoma and Frederickson. With positive train control-equipped locomotives working around the various passenger trains, plus battling the steepest mainline grades in the United States at 3.65%, the former Milwaukee Road line is considered the most outstanding out of the three divisions.
Tacoma Rail rosters 16 diesel locomotives. Though the EMD MP1500s make up the bulk of the fleet, the motive power also varies from SD40s to SD70ACe-P4s. This to accommodate the railroad’s complex system which includes operating in PTC territories and steep grades out of Tacoma.
