The Staples Subdivision or Staples Sub is a railway line running about 227 miles (365 km) from Dilworth to Fridley, Minnesota . It is operated by BNSF Railway as part of their Northern Transcon and contains the busiest segment of mainline track in the state, the segment between Coon Rapids and Fridley. As of 2015, most of the route hosted an average of 60 trains per day, and there were 80 trains per day near Fridley. This line has hosted Amtrak's Empire Builder since 1979, and the train makes stops along the Staples Subdivision in St. Cloud, Staples, and Detroit Lakes. Since November 2009, it has also hosted the Northstar Line commuter train, with stops in Fridley, Coon Rapids, Anoka, Ramsey, Elk River, and Northstar's home terminal in Big Lake. The Northstar could be expansions for the route.
As much a a good idea that this route is it seeing the light of day is slim as DTG will not make a branded/unbranded version. This is something that have to come from a third party and that could a long ways off from reality.
I raised the question in one of the streams and apparently there are issues in releasing non or de-branded routes because it will have a knock on effect on those who already have it. Which I guess means anyone that does have it would lose it.
longo239 What do you mean de-branded the route. They haven't released the route, it would be build from the ground up
Apologies, took the post off topic. All routes that have been released with BNSF liveries have either been retired or are only available on sale in the US and to make them available again would mean unbranding them. Apologies for the confusion.
Copyright or some other licensing issue. Dovetail will have to pay to use the BNSF logos and name and for some reason it can't be used outside of the US. There have been similar issues with companies in the UK and the routes got withdrawn.
Instead of 227 miles I think the route might be created with about 50 miles-ish of distance, mainly featuring the Northstar corridor for added variety. A third party would have to make the route since, like longo239 said DTG cannot get a license or has issues with the BNSF company in using its logo outside of the US, which means another developer would have to make a branded (US customers) and unbranded (customers outside USA) version of the route, which would take longer to get in the game due to the duplicate versions created.
MetrolinkF125#916 Yeah 250 is long AF, but 100 seems like a decent size. This sounds like a challenge. So a developer, eithter big or small, could make the route, but would he need to pay for the BNSF logo / rights? Or just get written permission?
I think that developer will need to pay for written permission and rights to use the company logo, name, and branding since it’s illegal and is under copyright law to use a company’s name, logo, and branding in another company’s (whether big or small) product/s or services without written and paid permission from the company whose logo is being used in another company’s products. If that was too complicated (I kinda mixed it up a little lol), then basically yes they need to pay for permission to use it or else that developer is gonna die due to issues with the federal government of that country and the company they tried to get the logo from. Since BNSF cannot give its licensing permissions outside of the US, an unbranded version must be created for those customers who are buying the route outside of the country or else that developer is, again, gonna “die”.
