Where Borealis improvements are being made

The train station building in Winona, Minnesota. The nearby rail siding will be rebuilt to mainline standards as part of upgrades to accommodate the new Borealis service.

As part of the startup of the new Borealis service on the Twin Cities–Milwaukee–Chicago, track improvements are planned near the stations in Winona, Minnesota and La Crosse, Wisconsin, as well as across the Mississippi River from La Crosse in La Crescent, MN. The primary host railroad, Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), is requiring upgrades to be made to preserve their capacity to run freight trains.

In isolation, these seem like good places to upgrade tracks—especially La Crosse and La Crescent, since they bookend a long, single-tracked river crossing that's limited to 25 mph. Frustratingly, these areas don't seem to be major contributors to congestion or delays for the Borealis itself, which makes me question whether these are really the right places to start. But, before I complain more about that, let's get into where things are happening.

The map above shows the general areas expected to receive upgrades, according to what was presented by WisDOT to area residents in November 2022. (WisDOT has been tasked with public engagement for all three cities about the upgrades, even though much of the work is happening in Minnesota.)

The areas to be changed look pretty small for a 410-mile route, even with a view focused just on the Winona–La Crosse area, though they do add up to around 8 miles of added or changed track.

Winona

Moving from west to east, the first area expected to be altered is around a spot known as Tower CK, where a short bit of Union Pacific Railroad track (an isolated part of the Winona Subdivision) branches off from the CPKC main line (their River Subdivision). The Union Pacific branch as well as the CPKC's short Third Street Spur nearby will have a short bypass added by extending a nearby siding.

Planned changes at Tower CK in Winona. The upper image is of an area slightly northwest, showing the junction with the Union Pacific Winona Subdivision, and the lower one shows the Third Street Spur connection. (PDF)

The purple triangle is a foundry property that has a small part of its building and some land behind it that might be taken as part of the upgrade.

Extending the siding so it goes past these two spur connections is a good idea, though I'm kind of baffled by the inclusion of a pair of crossover tracks in between the two spurs, only half a mile from the new end of the siding. It seems like it would have made more sense to have the Third Street Spur branch off from the UP's connection

It seems to me like this would have been a better idea, which would have removed a switch from the mainline rather than adding more of them:

An idea for removing the direct connection of the Third Street Spur from the mainline (blue) and adding a short stretch of track off of the Union Pacific line instead (yellow)

But maybe the Union Pacific rejected that, or there were other challenges. Or it's still possible that the design has been changed to something other than what was provided in 2022.

The next section is an upgrade to an existing 2.5-mile siding beginning near Winona station and extending southeast to the edge of the city. The switches for the current siding are manually controlled, so this would upgrade that to proper mainline centralized traffic control (CTC), along with appropriate signaling. The track itself should be upgraded to continuous welded rail instead of jointed rail. Apparently the grade crossings are also planned to receive improvements, though I peeked at them in Google Maps, and they looked like they already had the configurations shown here, so there must be some subtlety with them that I'm missing.

Three panes showing the upgraded siding at Winona station and points southeast. Top pane is farthest northwest, and bottom pane is the southeast end. Blue spots at the ends of the siding indicate where low-speed manual switches will be replaced with higher-speed automated ones. (PDF)

It's a bit strange that there's another siding here, less than two miles away from the siding that's just west of Tower CK. They're usually spread 6 to 10 miles apart on the rest of the line, but the Winona area already has three signaled sidings in the immediate vicinity: One north of Minnesota City, the one in Goodview that ends at Tower CK, and another one just southeast of Winona around Homer—I guess the next step will be to someday fill in the short 1-2 mile gaps between them and make the line properly double-tracked again through the area.

Preparation for eventual full double-tracking of the line through Winona might explain the double-crossover at Tower CK, since that would probably be a good place for one to be added once that happens. It's still a head-scratcher to do it now, though.

But back to this siding. I think the greatest benefit of upgrading the siding by the Winona station will be for passengers, since Amtrak riders currently have to cross over the siding to reach trains that stop here. There are nearly a dozen crossings like this at the station, with panels like what you find at a grade crossing, and unsightly jersey barriers blocking the rest of the tracks.

An Amtrak conductor assisting passengers as they board the Borealis on May 26, 2024. Note the panels over the tracks, allowing passengers to board across the siding track nearest the station. The siding can't normally be used due to manually-thrown switches at the ends of the siding.

Allowing Amtrak to actually use the track next to the station will make it much easier to build a more ADA-compliant low-height platform, something that the company is doing all across the country due to a settlement reached in late 2020. Winona station is due to receive upgrades for that as well, though it's not clear what the exact design will be (work on that project appears to have been dependent on when these track upgrades would happen). It would be nice if the station gets upgraded to have platforms on both sides of the tracks, though that probably won't be necessary until additional daily trips are added along the corridor.

I haven't found any information yet about planned design features for the Winona station, other than it's expected to get a better platform, better lighting, better connecting paths, and things like that.

La Crescent

On to La Crescent, where there's what I like to call a "super-wye" and a "mini-wye," although the latter is just a regular-sized one. At the north end of a large triangular arrangement of track is a point known as River Junction, roughly marking the end of the River Subdivision (although the actual end appears to be a few miles north). Continuing straight south, trains enter the Marquette Subdivision, which continues along the river into Iowa. The Tomah Subdivision begins slightly north and veers east through the junction, then meeting a short east-west connection from the Marquette Subdivision at Bridge Junction, where it of course leads onto the Mississippi River Bridges that carry the line through La Crosse and let it continue east to Portage. 

The Marquette Subdivision leg of the wye includes the River Junction Yard. A number of changes are planned here, including converting one track to more easily allow through-running.

Two images showing the River Junction Yard area. The top image is the south end of the yard, and the bottom image is the north end (yard in the lower-right). North is to the left in both images. A thin yellow line shows a track that will be added/changed to a through track. Other tracks in the yard will be trimmed back a bit on the south end. It appears the westernmost track will also be set up similar to a through track. (PDF)

The changes there will go hand-in-hand with changes on the south leg of the super-wye, where the mini-wye also joins the Marquette Subdivision to the Tomah Subdivision.

Bridge Junction (inset, north is up) and the La Crescent wye and south end of River Junction Yard (rotated >90° counter-clockwise, north is to the left). (PDF)

In part, these changes are intended to allow trains to move faster through these junctions. Apparently freight trains are currently limited to just 10 mph when turning through Bridge Junction, and the limit may be similar for the La Crescent wye. I was a bit surprised looking at these plans that the proposed Bridge Junction curve actually seems sharper in spots, which you'd think would limit speeds more, but the real limiting factor has been the turnout curve of the switch.

Making a straighter segment for the switch itself and slightly sharpening the curves around it apparently will allow freights to move through it more quickly. It'll only increase their speeds to 15 mph, but that's a 50% boost for them. Replacing the switches on the La Crescent wye should allow freights to move at 25 mph that way.

This feels like the most significant improvement I've seen so far for actually speeding up trains, though I have reservations about whether now was the right time to implement it. I certainly would have preferred more smoothing of that Bridge Junction curve, such as if it could allow freights to go through there at 25 mph as well, but that would have required some real earth-moving, and would likely need extensive environmental review due to the nearby wetlands.

At some point, a much faster river crossing should be built, which will make these tweaks look pretty small.

La Crosse

Finally, we get to areas around La Crosse station.

Changes planned for the area around La Crosse station in the upper pane, and additional track changes leading into the nearby rail yard in the lower pane. The second pane shows an area northeast of the first. Some of the coloring for track changes seems incorrect for this one. (PDF)

While it looks like this area currently has two main tracks, I believe the second one is really just a lead track for trains getting assembled at the southwest end of the yard. This area will be upgraded to have two through tracks, and the lead track may be usable as a main track as well, as this example shows double-crossovers just west of the yard.

Before 2000, the station appeared to have three or four platforms, though I have a vague recollection of visiting for a school field trip and seeing everything in a very rickety condition. The station had once been planned to be a new Union Station for La Crosse, which ended up having at least five stations. They never consolidated operations, so those platforms probably went unused by passengers, but might have helped freight train crews.

After decades of decline, track was consolidated to the current configuration (or something close to it). A new platform was built roughly where the second platform had been before, and the gap between the station and the platform was filled in.

It's surprising that this layout didn't plan to undo that infill, changing the existing platform into an island between two tracks, although it would still need to be rebuilt higher to meet newer ADA requirements, and I'm not sure if a higher ADA platform would fit with the historic awning in front of La Crosse station (though if that was the issue, it likely says more about historic preservation rules than ADA requirements).

So, I'm a bit concerned about how this new layout will work if service reaches a point where two trains could be boarding here at about the same time. Perhaps with that crossover, they intend the empty area across the tracks from the station to be used as another platform. It would be a bit strange to have 3 tracks sandwiched between two platforms, but it could work.

Most of the public engagement around the La Crosse station has to do with the changes to sidewalks and roadway crossings, which create significant challenges. There are quite a lot of properties that may be impacted, either just during construction or permanently, although it's generally just a matter of a few feet of space being needed.

Impact on Borealis train performance

After going through this exercise, I'm feeling a bit better about these changes, and seeing some of the positives, but I'm still skeptical that they're very impactful in terms of traffic flow as things stand today. Is the real-world performance matching expectations from the models that drove the decisions to update these particular spots?

The Winona station siding is bubbling to the top of my list as a useful improvement, since it facilitates building a better platform. But it also would have been fine to build a platform on the opposite side of the tracks from the station building. As long as there's clear communication with passengers about where to be and when, along with a short path to get across, that could work well.

I don't have good access to details on exactly when freight trains move through their network or on the other lines that share or cross their tracks, so it's difficult to say as an outsider how this one new train affects their operations.

Delays by station for the eastbound Borealis train 1340 from start of service until June 22nd showing delays mostly happening between Columbus/Milwaukee and Chicago. (interactive link)

Eastbound, there's not much delay happening getting to La Crosse. Going by median values, trains are delayed by about 8 minutes shortly after getting out of Union Depot. By La Crosse, that delay has only increased to 9 minutes, and the run to Tomah regains 3, so the median delay there is only 6 minutes.

Delays by station for the westbound Borealis train 1333 from start of service until June 22nd, showing delays mostly happening between Milwaukee and Columbus and between Red Wing and St. Paul instead of around Winona–La Crosse. (interactive link)

Westbound is a similar story, with trains having a median delay of 27 minutes in Tomah, 26 minutes in La Crosse, 24 minutes in Winona, and recovering one more minute arriving in Red Wing.

When studies for a new TCMC train came back around 2015, they arrived with eye-watering cost estimates of over $200 million in infrastructure costs just to add a single trip pair, with another $46 million tacked on for the trains themselves. Through years of work, the overall cost was trimmed down to $53.3 million.

It may be that the train volumes in this area are unusually low lately. While recent filings with the Federal Railroad Administration's grade crossing safety system indicate there are 21 trains per day on the northern part of the River Subdivision, that apparently drop to about 11 trains per day at the south end. Submitted data suggests only about 4 or 5 trains per day on the west end of the Tomah Subdivision, and 13 trains per day on the north end of the Marquette Subdivision.

The merger of Canadian Pacific with Kansas City Southern is expected to add six or seven trains per day running north-south on the River and Marquette Subdivisions versus the pre-merger conditions. The River Sub is expected to reach about 18 trains per day and Marquette is supposed to see about 14.

One of the big purported benefits of the merger is that freight customers' cargo can bypass Chicago by running along the Mississippi instead, so we'll see if that ends up fully coming to fruition, and whether that really makes these investments worthwhile.

But, it certainly gives me an uneasy feeling that we've spent more than a decade of time from advocates and well-intentioned government officials only to find that this project may have done more to facilitate a $31 billion railroad mega-merger than to actually get passengers where they need to go on time.