Goodbye CBRW 302

February 27, 2026

Jaguar sold off this one and the 1626, both former NP GP9s. The 302 left Pasco for points east. I caught it at a few places along the way.

Hatton

Cunningham

Providence Hill

Lind

BN Train Near Deep Creek

Image courtesy of Blair Kooistra. 

Blair says:

"I LOVE Fridays. It means I get to share photos of F-UNITS with y'all!!!

This one sums Burlington Northern's Eastern Washington branchlines up in a single frame. . . eastbound CW Branch local drops down the Deep Creek grade at the Highway 2 overpass on August 15, 1981. Three former Northern Pacific F9's and a GP7 lead a train of woodchips and wheat--mostly wheat--towards a mainline connection at Cheney.

It's a scene that, apart from the operating railroad and the locomotives, hasn't changed much at all in the past 42 years. Wheat is still the primary commodity, and--for now, anyway--Jaguar Transport operates the line owned by the State of Washington under the name Washington Eastern.

Waterville Railway construction begins on October 14, 1909

This is the text of the Historylink.org essay found here:
https://www.historylink.org/file/9380

On October 14, 1909, construction begins on the Waterville Railway running from the town of Waterville to Douglas, a hamlet five miles east. There it will connect with the Mansfield branch of the Great Northern. This little standard gauge railroad, 4.5 miles long, is claimed at the time to be the shortest in the United States. Whether or not this is true, it is certainly one of the shortest in the state of Washington. It proves essential to relieving the isolation of Waterville, the county seat of Douglas County, and to getting the area's wheat crops to distant markets. Of amazing duration and never in debt, the railroad will operate from 1910 until 1948, when bridges and part of the track are destroyed in the flood of that June.

Building the Missing Link 

Merchants and farmers had long wanted railway service. For Waterville, on the high Columbia plateau rising east of the river, transportation had always been a problem. Road access to Spokane involved various obstacles including the steep sides of Moses Coulee, while access to the Columbia River steamship landings meant negotiating treacherous Corbaley Canyon over a route that followed an old Indian trail. The temporary solution for getting wheat sacks from Waterville down to the river and merchandise up to the plateau had been a tram with large steel buckets that operated from 1902 until the railroad came in 1910. Passengers, mail, and additional freight still had to come by stagecoach and wagon until the arrival of the railroad.

On October 9, 1909, the Great Northern completed a branch leading from Mansfield to Douglas, from which it connected with the main cross-country route via Wenatchee. Of course Waterville leaders had been hoping the Great Northern would continue its spur line from Douglas into their town. When this did not happen, they formed their own company, the Waterville Railway Company, to fill in the missing link, raising $80,000 to do so. A. L. Rogers of Waterville, a former Great Northern employee, did the original engineering of the Waterville Railroad, charging the local company $1. Rogers speculated that the Great Northern had questioned the profitability of building a spur line into Waterville because of the "bad adverse grade" ("Waterville Developed ...") from Douglas to Waterville, which was 275 feet higher.

The railroad was completed in the summer of 1910 with ties, rails, and fastenings on more or less permanent loan from the Great Northern. Depots were built at both Waterville and Douglas for freight and passengers. When the Waterville Railroad had been in operation for six years, Rogers reported: "Every year there has been a small but steady profit, which has been invested in school bonds and stowed away as a reserve fund. Out of this reserve fund the roadbed is maintained, overhead charges paid and emergencies of all sorts provided against" ("Waterville Developed ...").

One such emergency occurred on February 26, 1920. The passenger coach, which five people had already boarded, was waiting by the Waterville depot while the freight cars took on wheat at a siding. Somehow the brakes released and the coach began rolling down the track. It reached the speed of 40 miles per hour and did not stop until crashing into the depot at Douglas and knocking it four feet off its foundation. Miraculously, no one on the coach or in the depot was hurt, but the damage to coach and depot was significant.

Decline of the Line

In 1927, the Great Northern was considering reclaiming the loan of rails and other equipment. The Waterville Railway Company would either have to cease operation, raise money to replace them, or buy them from the Great Northern. The officers of the company sent a long letter to the Great Northern tracing the history of the little railroad and its critical importance not only to Waterville but to all of North Central Washington. They also reminded the Great Norther of a verbal agreement, "That so long as track material was used for the benefit of the community as a whole, and all traffic assembled was turned over to the Great Northern Railroad ..." and that the Waterville Railway did not "pass into other hands that were opposed to the best interest of the Great Northern Railway," the Waterville Railway could continue to use items from the original loan (Beginnings, 24).

The letter acknowledged that the agricultural slump of the 1920s, with poor wheat prices, bank failures, and bad weather, had reduced freight shipments, but assured the Great Northern that the worst of it was over: "Our outgoing and incoming carload tonnage has come back and will justify the maintenance and operation of the road" (Beginnings, 24).

End of the Line 

Passenger demand was also down because of the "disastrous effect of the automotive industry and the craze for private cars, trucks and auto buses," but writers of the letter naively insisted that "the peak of the automotive industry has been reached ..." and when "people will get over their joy riding spree when their bellies are empty and their credit exhausted" (Beginnings, 24), passenger demand would recover. Their arguments must have been persuasive, as the Great Northern withdrew its threat to call in the loan. Freight shipping recovered but the demand for passenger service gradually dwindled.

The great flood in June of 1948 doomed the Waterville Railway, washing out bridges and part of the track through Douglas Creek Canyon. It was never rebuilt, and the tracks were taken up in 1954. In 1985 the Burlington Northern, which by then had acquired the Great Northern, abandoned the Mansfield-Douglas line, leaving that portion of North Central Washington without any rail service whatsoever. The dreaded cars, trucks, and motor coaches had taken over for good.

Sources:

Beginnings (Waterville: 1989), 22-25; "Waterville Developed Community Spirit in Days When it Had No Railroad -- Now This Spirit is Bearing Fruit," Spokesman-Review, October 8, 1916, p. M-5.

Monighan Walking Crane At Coulee City

October 3, 1946

Notice it's at the end of the tracks. The fuel dealer at the end of track can be partially seen too. The grain elevator on the right still stands today.

1916 Coulee City View

This view shows it all. 

1906 Construction Photos Beverly Bridge

From the Washington State Digital Archives

1952 Truman Visit To Wenatchee

Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Snapshot of crowd gathering to meet President Harry S. Truman's train in Wenatchee, Washington, during his whistlestop tour for Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman. From: Richard Cull.

October 2, 1952

From the Lake Chelan Historical Society Museum

1948 Truman Visit To Wenatchee

Credit: U.S. Navy

Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

June 9, 1948

A crowd gathers at the Wenatchee, Washington train station to meet President Harry S. Truman who is making a presidential campaign stop on his trip to the West Coast and to view flood waters in the area. From: Naval Photo Center, sent to the Truman Library by the National Archives. 

WCRC At Wheeler View

Photo by Ken Ardinger. From the collection of Ted Curphey. 

July 20, 1987

Located inside what was then the Carnation potato processing facility, now run by Simplot.

Grant Orchards School Sold

From the Wenatchee "World."

August 14, 1958

An F For Everyone!

Photo courtesy Tom Carver. 

October 1980

Tom says:

"BN's CW (Central Washington) local, a.k.a. Coulee City turn, is heading west at Reardan with enough Fs and a Geep for the return trip with a heavy train of loads picked up at the grain elevators where these empties will be dropped off on the way west. A Geep was always included on the rear of the consist for switching elevator the Seattle Branch out of Davenport, the former Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, which the NP purchased in 1890. 

Digging Out On Highway 2

Guest post by Michael Sawyer.

Digging Out on Highway 2: A Winter Memory

Thirty-three years ago, today. I found myself in an inconvenient situation along Washington State Highway 2, positioned between Hartline and Coulee City. While attempting a U-turn that proved to be ill-advised, my truck became stuck in the deep winter conditions.

Fortunately, assistance was nearby. The section Foreman and the Plow Engineer came to my aid, working together to dig my truck out and get me back on the road.

State Highway 2, Washington

January 12, 1993

©️ 2026 Michael Douglas Sawyer | Photography

All Rights Reserved 

Train 88 At Lynch Coulee

Photo by Doug Harrop. Courtesy of James Belmont. 

May 25, 1976

Burlington Northern train 88 ascends a 1% grade through Lynch Coulee on the former Great Northern east of Trinidad, Washington.

PCC Cab Ride

 
Guest post by Vaughn MacKenzie.

Railroading with Mike & Tom on the Palouse River & Coulee City, early November 1997. Longtime friend David Roberts and I scored a cab ride from Cheney to Reardan and it was a fantastic adventure. The weather was perfect, albeit cold & drafty in the aging GP35 lead locomotive. The excitement began just as we were rolling out of town at 10mph with our consist of 52 cars when we nearly hit a white Olds at a crossing. A lady panicked and stopped on the tracks then couldn’t get backed up, and her passenger quickly bailed out. She was frantically fumbling with the gear selector. Tom dumped the air and we stopped mere inches from her bumper. The rest of the ride was less eventful but beautiful. The accomodations in the locomotive were somewhat lacking, so if nature called we were instructed to step onto the catwalk when we were out in open countryside, secure a firm grip on the railing with one hand and let it fly with the other 😂.