"Sandpoint seeks to provide railroad input... A new rail line proposed to ship coal from Montana to the West Coast, the Tongue River Railroad is the latest coal shipment proposal the city is acting upon..."

The foregoing lead-in to an article that appeared in the Sept. 24, 2014, Press would lead us to conclude that new tracks of steel slicing across the scenic landscape from the Big Sky Country to the Pacific Ocean were imminently upon us. It would appear the heroic Sandpoint City Council members represented our last line of defense in fending off such an encroachment. Coal, that carbon emitting doomsday matter set to destroy our planet. The mere mention of it provides substance for headlines these days.

In the late 19th century, the Northern Pacific railroad opened for settlement the northern tier of the United Stated and parts of Canada. Shiny new tracks reached all the way from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound. The chug-chug and clack-clack of steam locomotion led our part of the continent from a beaver pelt economy to a powerful agricultural, mining, and lumber-producing engine. Northern Pacific laid a network totaling 6,800 miles of track in the 13 years between 1870 and 1883. Former President Ulysses S. Grant drove the golden spike in western Montana on Sept. 8, 1883. The task was not easy. Financial difficulties plagued the company. The bank panic of 1873 almost brought it to bankruptcy. General George Armstrong Custer was forced to dispatch 7th Cavalry expeditions to protect the construction crews and surveyors from Indian raids in the Dakota and Montana territories. Infighting between the Eastern bankers and power brokers financing and leading the enterprise caused almost constant turmoil. Despite all the problems, the Northern Plains and the Inland Empire we enjoy today was born.

Compare that great undertaking with one of today. The Tongue River Railroad project, the project the Sandpoint Chamber is questioning, is in fact a 42-mile stretch of track connecting a site known as the Otter Creek coal reserve in southeastern Montana to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. The proposed track will connect with the BNSF line known as the Colstrip Subdivision. BSNF is the present owner of what was the Northern Pacific Railroad. It shares a three-way partnership in the Tongue River Railroad with Arch Coal, a major coal producer, and candy magnate Forrest Mars Jr.

The application for the project was filed with the United States Surface Transportation Board, then the ICC, on Jan, 6, 1984. In the intervening 30 years, literally hundreds of filings have followed. The main opponent to the project is the Northern Plains Research Council. Ranchers concerned with the threat of industrial-scale coal mining to their property formed NPRC in 1972. This group has made 65 opposition filings since 1997. To date, not a shovel-full of dirt has moved on the project. What a difference a century and a half make. Thirteen years to build a 6,800-mile railroad in the 1800s, 30 years to build nothing today.

So now Sandpoint, Idaho, wants to get in the act. According to Councilwoman Shannon Williamson, "the STB is agreeable to factoring concerns of communities along the rail line in its decision making." What if every little town and village up and down the line actually could tell the railroad what it could and could not transport? Obviously, the whole system would soon grind to a halt. If that had been the case in 1883, there would be no railroad. If there had been no railroad, there would be no Sandpoint. Problem solved.

Writing in Coal Age magazine on Aug. 22, 2013, David Gambrel points out that in 1986, IBM introduced the 5140 Convertible listed at $1,995 with a grand total of 256,000 bytes of RAM. He then lists all the problems the Tongue River Railroad has had with bureaucracy and environmentalists since then. His conclusion: "Thankfully, the laptop computer was not under constant opposition as was the Tongue River Railroad. The computer advanced, the railroad did not." Amen.

Bob LaRue is a resident of Hauser.