Railroad, state 'rescue' 34 freight cars at Colfax

Railroad service on the east side of Main Street resumed for a short time Monday morning when railroad crews and state Department of Transportation crews worked to remove 34 stranded freight cars which were parked on the N. Clay spur line. The operation included clearing the tracks of a paving layer on the N. Main crossing which left the railroad cars isolated.

State crews last May paved over the railroad crossing on Main Street after a lowboy trailer damaged the rail that crosses the highway on the southbound side.

The emergency paving job to cover the rails to remove the traffic hazard left 34 cars stranded in the N. Clay Street area up behind Schmuck Park. The state was aware of the isolated cars at the time and vowed to arrange for the crossing to be revived enough to get the cars back onto the west side of town where the rail system connects with Hooper and the Union Pacific.

Dec. 22 crews worked to clear the pavement from the rails. A Watco engine was used to inch its way across the tracks. Highway 195 traffic was held up across the four lanes to get the first haul of 17 freight cars.

Bob Westby, head of the WSDOT regional railroad office in Spokane, said the 34 cars were being removed in two 17-car segments so an emergency detour for Highway 195 traffic using the Third Street crossing behind the high school would remain open. If the 17-car train had a derailment on the faulty rail at Main Street, the train would have cleared the Third Street crossing and the detour route could have been used.

The detour route was also reserved for the first day of Christmas vacation so the school’s traffic was absent.

A crew from Great Northwestern Railroad worked with WSDOT crews to clear the crossing and control traffic. Great Northwestern is a subsidiary of Watco, the company which operates the rail service into Colfax on the state-owned lines.

Crews Monday were leery of how the empty freight cars would clear the small segment of missing rail on the north side track which has been covered for the last seven months by the temporary paving.

Presence of the stranded freight cars with graffiti markings drew some objections from residents who could see them from Schmuck Park this summer.

Monday’s crossing required activation of the railroad signals which have been out of use since the crossing was paved over last May.

Traffic backed up for several blocks on all four lanes as the engine made its first westbound crossing with the first 17 cars. The extra slow moving train blocked traffic for just less than 10 minutes.