By Justin Franz

SANDPOINT, Idaho — BNSF Railway’s second bridge over Lake Pend Oreille in Sandpoint, Idaho, opened to rail traffic on November 20. 

The old bridge, built by the Northern Pacific in 1905, has been a source of headaches for the last few years as numerous structural deficiencies have been discovered in it. BNSF began building a new one in 2020 and now that it is open, the railroad will upgrade the original. On the day the main was cut over to the new bridge, BNSF detoured two Z trains and Amtrak’s Empire Builder over the nearby Union Pacific route between Sandpoint and Spokane, Wash.

Sandpoint is a busy junction for rail traffic in the Pacific Northwest and is where BNSF’s Northern Transcon across Montana’s Hi-Line meets with Montana Rail Link’s former Northern Pacific across southern Montana. At Sandpoint, traffic from those routes is combined for the run across “The Funnel” west to Spokane.