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BNSF Puts ‘Snow Coaches’ Into Service As Winter Roars in the Northwest

BNSF Railway ES44DC 7888 leads the “Snow Coach” east near East Glacier Park, Mont., on Feb. 13, 2021. Photo by Justin Franz.

BNSF Puts ‘Snow Coaches’ Into Service As Winter Roars in the Northwest

By Justin Franz

MARIAS PASS, Mont. — As Old Man Winter batters the western half of the United States, BNSF Railway is turning to its fleet of “snow coaches” to safely move train crews. 

In 2019, BNSF restored two former Santa Fe Hi-Level coaches and two baggage cars as “snow coaches” for use on the Northwest and Montana Divisions. The cars, once used on Santa Fe’s premier passenger trains, were rebuilt at the railroad’s shop in Topeka, Kan. The cars are used when conditions are too dangerous to send out normal crew vans or when there are just too many crews to move. 

Budd built 73 Hi-Level passenger cars for the Santa Fe between 1952 and 1964 for use on the El Capitan between Los Angeles and Chicago. The Hi-Level cars are both matched with a baggage car. Hi-Level car 70 is normally based in Whitefish, Mont. and car 71 is based in Pasco, Wash. Union Pacific has its own versions of the snow coach, dubbed “Blizzard Buses,” based in Utah and Idaho. 

This past weekend, both sets of BNSF snow coaches (also sometimes called snow buses) were seen in service in the Northwest. In Montana, the snow coach ran over Marias Pass between Whitefish and Blackfoot (near Browning). In Washington, the snow coach was seen in the Columbia River Gorge after an ice storm shuttered local roads and Interstate 84 on the southside of the river in Oregon. The railroad also put a HazMat caboose into snow coach service to ferry crews around Portland and Vancouver, Wash. 

Additional reporting by Randall Pratt. 

A BNSF Railway HazMat caboose was pushed into snow coach duty in Vancouver, Wash., over the weekend. Photo by Randall Pratt. 

This article was posted on: February 16, 2021