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BNSF's Seattle Subdivision is a north/south route running from Seattle, WA down to Vancouver, WA, across the river from Portland, OR. It is quite the varied route as it passes through the urban SEATAC region, then directly along the shores of Puget Sound through communities such as Ruston, Chambers Bay, and Steilacoom, then cuts through rural western Washington (climbing up and down Napavine Hill along the way), and finally reaching the Columbia River near Kalama, WA, which it loosely follows the rest of the way to the major terminal in Vancouver.
Many BNSF freight trains can be seen across the entire route. Union Pacific has Trackage Rights on a little section near Seattle, then also from Tacoma all the way to Vancouver (and into Portland). Sounder Commuter trains use the Sub between Seattle and Tacoma. Lastly, a dozen Amtrak Cascade Service trains ply the route, along with the pair of long distance Coast Starlight trains. These trains bypass the scenic area along Puget Sound between Tacoma and Nisqually, and instead use the Lakewood Sub/Point Defiance Bypass between those two points.
In addition to a whole lot of manifest trains handling loose-carload traffic from the region's industries, the Seattle Sub is a major intermodal origin/destination point for the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. A significant amount of U.S. grain exports find their way onto the Sub and are transloaded from trains to ships at Seattle, Tacoma, Longview, and Kalama, in addition to Grey Harbor/Aberdeen on the Puget Sound and Pacific RR. Many coal trains from Montana and Wyoming ply the route on their way to Roberts Bank, BC to be exported overseas. Lastly, BNSF and UP haul garbage from the Puget Sound region to dumps along the Columbia River in eastern Washington/Oregon.
Part One covers many locations along the route from suburban Kent, WA (which is as far north as I made it) southward to Nisqually, WA. [Part Two will cover the rest of the route to Vancouver, WA.]