Alternative D1 would continue to follow the BNSF right of way all the way south to Olson Memorial Highway (Minnesota State Highway 55) and would follow Olson Memorial Highway all the way into downtown.
From there, traffic is either switched to the Patriot Woods Railroad, formally known as the Weyerhaeuser Woods Railroad, where it is transported to Weyerhaeuser's Green Mountain Sawmill at Toutle or it is switched to the BNSF/Union Pacific joint main line for movement to either Portland, Oregon, or Seattle.
Now part of the BNSF system, this remains the route of the Amtrack Southwest Chief, with one passenger train each direction daily, but little freight traffic.
Between Chicago and Galesburg, Illinois, this train service uses the same double track (BNSF, old CB&Q) as three other Amtrak routes: the California Zephyr, the Southwest Chief, and the Carl Sandburg.
The line is dispatched from the BNSF control center located in Fort Worth, Texas.
BNSF's Casco Subdivision to Hibbing connects to the Lakes Sub on both ends, at Gunn near Grand Rapids and at Brookston.
The hosts think that U.S. high speed rail plans, as opposed to the ostensible goal of speeding passenger transport, are actually schemes to provide government-funded infrastructure improvements to politically connected freight railroads, such as BNSF.
At Target Field station, the parallel rail lines of the old Great Northern Railway (north side track now BNSF) and the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (south side track now Union Pacific) travel eastbound past the Federal Reserve Bank, the site of the old Minneapolis Great Northern Depot, across the Mississippi River on the Minneapolis BNSF Rail Bridge, and then across Nicollet Island.
The track through Perkinsville is also used to haul freight between Clarkdale and Drake, on the BNSF rail system.
As of 2007, BNSF and government agencies in Washington state are committed to enlarging Stampede Tunnel to accommodate larger intermodal freight cars.
Wetta was born in Wichita, and lived in Wellington, where he worked as a conductor/engineer with the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway Company from 1966 to 2006.