Last train to Pullman heads down Palouse River tracks

What could very well have been the last train to run on the state-owned railroad between Colfax and Pullman rolled out Wednesday morning.

The Washington & Idaho Railway pulled out a string of multi-use railroad cars that have been stored on the track for the past four years.

“The cars are leaving, and we haven’t been told where they’re going. I think it was above the pay grade of our point person,” said Stan Patterson, president of the W&I Railway. “I don’t foresee a train going past Albion ever again.”

Patterson said they may have to come back next week to pick up a few cars the engines could not pull this week.

The stored cars have slowly been disappearing over the past two months.

“I think it was probably in June when they started taking them out by our house,” said Karen Hinnenkamp, who lives along the railroad south of the Shawnee elevator station.

The W&I began storing the cars on the line when the economy began to hit the tank and the cars were not needed. Since then, said Patterson, the economy has seen a bit of a rebound and the scrap value for the iron has seen a sharp rise.

“They did tell us they’re not going back into action. I imagine they’re going off to be cut up and sold off,” he said.

That is just fine with some of the owners of the land along the railroad. Several wrote letters to the editor about the sight of rusty rail cars sitting along the tracks.

“I’ll sure be glad to see the last of them,” said Ken Duft, who lives near the railroad outside of Pullman and dubbed the line of cars a ‘Rusty Ribbon of Shame’ in a letter to the Gazette last year.

Storage of railroad cars has been the only use of the line between Colfax and Pullman since a fire that swept the South Palouse River valley in August of 2006, destroying a trestle over the river and severing the rail link three miles east of Colfax.

Patterson said increasing costs of storing the cars has meant he has mostly been storing them to hold the track in place.

“We’ve been keeping those last five miles of cars out there in case there is any potential for some sort of future use of the railroad,” said Patterson.

The W&I received $9,000 per month per mile to store the cars. The railroad pays in excess of $5,000 per month to spray weeds and maintain crossings. Add to that the costs of insurance, bridge inspections and payroll and the profit margin shrinks quickly.

“This hasn’t been the most profitable experience for us,” said Patterson.

The W&I has rented the track from the state to store the cars.

The railroad was built nearly 125 years ago by the Oregon River and Navigation Co. which created the Columbia & Palouse Railroad to haul grain to Portland.

Monday marked the fourth anniversary of the day a fire began in a barley field on the heights east of Thorn Street before spreading down to the river valley.

State and local officials have since that time been asking if the bridge is worth replacing.

“I don’t think it is,” said Joe Poire, executive director of the Port of Whitman County.

As mandated by legislation tied to the state’s purchase and release of money to maintain the track, the port spearheaded the formation of a four-county rail authority to govern the 300 miles of state-owned track in eastern Washington.

A 2008 repair estimate by the state put the cost of replacing the bridge at around $1.5 million.

Mike Rowswell, who has been assigned to oversee the railroad by the state Department of Transportation, said repairing the burned-out trestle is not the only hurdle to running trains on that line.

“It’s on the back burner right now,” said Rowswell. “There’s just not the potential for traffic to warrant repair of all the other bridges and maintenance on 18 miles of track.”

A mainstay customer for the railroad for years was Washington State University which shipped coal from the UP line at Hooper to fire its boiler system. The coal shipments ended when the university converted to natural gas.

“So you fix that trestle and then one little fire down the line can wipe it out. Or a flood,” said Rowswell. “That river – it’s a living creature.”

Engineering studies done by the state have shown a greater potential for traffic with an east-west line connection between Thornton and Oakesdale along a long abandoned Union Pacific route.

“I think that Thornton piece is going to be built,” predicted Poire. “I believe there will be a justification to rebuild that piece. I think, as we move forward, you’re going to see the private sector move more stuff by rail.”

That connection would leave the problem of what to do with the 18 miles of track between Colfax and Pullman.

“We’re just hoping they don’t turn it into a trail,” said Hinnenkamp.

That just may be what happens.

Government officials can preserve railroad rights-of-way as trails in the rail-banking program. The Bill Chipman Palouse Trail between Pullman and Moscow was created to bank the ground for a possible return of rail service.

“If the W&I stops storing cars and we have to pay to keep off the weeds and everything, then rail-banking that is a real possibility,” said Rowswell. “But then, of course, there’s the matter of finding a local government to take it over.”

Whitman County’s parks department has discussed in the past the possibility of a rail-to-trail on the segment.

Parks Director Tim Myers told the Gazette last year he had heard a great deal of community interest in making the rail bed a trail for hiking and biking.

“That would be a wonderful trail from Pullman to Albion,” said Duft. “It’s a relatively level run, and it’s incredibly scenic. It’s everything that’s beautiful about living on the Palouse.”

But would a trail be beneficial to people living along the route?

“I look at that bee’s nest that lady over in Palouse has gotten into,” Hinnencamp said, referring to the controversy between cattle owners and kayakers on the North Fork Palouse River.

“I don’t want that to become our back yard.”