The plan would have boosted railroad’s daily train traffic through Mankato from two or three to as many as 34 mile-long trains — half of them coal-filled trains feeding power plants to the east, half of them westbound empty trains returning to the Powder River Basin.

Photo by Michael Hicks via Flickr taken in Rochester, Minn.

“A controversial plan to run as many as 13,000 additional trains through Mankato each year has been mothballed by the owners of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad, an apparent end to a 15-year effort by the railroad to become a major coal-hauling carrier.

“Weakening demand for coal has prompted the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. to place on ‘indefinite deferral’ any plans to extend the network into Wyoming’s coal-rich Powder River Basin — an apparent death knell for a plan that prompted fierce opposition in Mankato, Rochester and some other towns along the route,” via Mankato Free Press.