Route
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. At a wye, the route turns Northwest in the GN East side line, which then joins the parallel ex-Northern Pacific main line. The Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines are merged into BNSF, and this is now the BNSF Northern Transcon (transcontinental) line.
The route travels north through the Northtown Classification Yards, over Interstate 694 and makes its first stop at 61st Avenue in Fridley at the yard limit of Northtown, where it enters BNSF's Staples Subdivision. The double track line continues past the current Foley Boulevard park-and-ride bus station, which is planned as a future Northstar station, and turns northwest at Coon Creek Junction, where the old GN route to Duluth (now BNSF's Hinckley Subdivision) heads straight north. The current Coon Rapids station is behind the Riverdale shopping center by Round Lake Boulevard, and new stations were also built in Anoka, Elk River, and Big Lake.
GN and NP had local service from Minneapolis to all of the cities currently served by Northstar up through the early 20th century. One Fridley station was about a mile north of the current stop, at Mississippi Boulevard. There was a stop possibly shared by GN and NP at Coon Creek Junction. There were at least three stations built in Anoka over the years, while there were two stations in Elk River and two in Big Lake, with both cities having one stop for each railroad.
Read more about this topic: Northstar Line
Famous quotes containing the word route:
“In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space—out of time.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)