What was once the planned relocation of the Northern Pacific mainline across Washington State, became a backwater branchline that is now out of service.
Drivers along Interstate 90 east of Moses Lake, WA are often confused by the railroad line that "follows" the road. It was, in fact, the other way around.
The NP was aware that their mainline was longer than the competing lines of the Milwaukee and the Great Northern, so came up with a plan for a line to branch off their mainline at Ritzville, and run mostly due west to Ellensburg. This would save about 80 miles of running time, instead of dipping south through Pasco and then back north through Yakima. The line was surveyed and grading started at Ritzville and connected into the abuilding Connell Northern branch headed north out of Warden, WA, at a location called Bassett Junction.
Rail was laid from Bassett to Remple (now called Schrag), when the project stopped. Cold. Why? The opening of the Panama Canal. It would seem that enough traffic disappeared from the otherwise very frugal NP that the project could no longer be justified.
The NP did look at completing the line a few more times over the years, including a plan to use the Milwaukee grade to Ellensburg. The last internal correspondence the NP had about this project was about 1951.
Most traffic on on the branch was from a modest sized grain elevator at Schrag. It was still shipping when Burlington Northern sold off the old Connell Northern branch in 1986 to the Washington Central. Operations continued to be seasonal as ownership changed to the Columbia Basin Railway, after BN bought back the Washington Central, but promptly spun the Connell Northern lines right back out.
In the Columbia Basin era, car supply became dependent on the State of Washington having purchased older hopper cars, and doling them out to a few shortlines, in order to help keep truck traffic off state roads. In the photo you'll see these greenish yellow cars in abundance.
I'm not so sure the brain-trust who put the state program cars into service thought much about the rule about 50 year old cars being prohibited from interchange service, but that is what seems to have killed off service on this branch. The photo here is from 2012, but in a few short years these cars were parked at Schrag, rusting to the rails, as they were all too old to hand off to the BNSF anymore.
Those cars sat for about two years before they were rounded up and doled out to other state-owned shortlines for captive use, where they are still today.
The Columbia Basin Railway ownership has changed recently. All the small power like the pictured GP9s are now long gone, and the branch is being used to store out of service Cryotrans reefers, with the mechanical refrigeration parts removed. There are nearly 100 of these cars out there today. Is this the end of what was supposed to be a mainline?
Most of this information I plan on using for a program at the upcoming NPRHA convention this year in Toppenish, WA.
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