EWG Rocklyn View

Photo by Gary Durr.

May 2017

Heading West bound into the Setting sun, an Empty EWG Scoot train led by a former MRL SD45 rolls through Rocklyn Washington on its way to Hartline and Coulee city... Longer days and better weather, I am surprised that I have not seen more railfans out photographing the old EMD power that usually draws many to the east side of the state.

EWG Deep Creek View

Photo by Gary Durr.

May 2017

An EWG Westbound scoot train led by three big EMD units, is just starting its climb out of Deep creek at MP 15 on a beautiful warm spring afternoon. After one of the most grueling winters that I have ever experienced, it is wonderful to see the beautiful blue skies, green trees and fields... and BARE ground..Spring has sprung here in Eastern Washington....the many flooded fields and drainage ditches are finally drying up and the weather has been getting increasingly warmer... Life is Good...

Introducing The 329

Photo by Bruce Butler.

September 18, 2016

Saturday the 17th was a dreary, rainy day. 329 made its first run on the EWG. Seen here pulling storage cars off of the Geiger spur so some steel can be delivered to the customers.

Rounding The Curve At Deep Creek

Photo by Gary Durr.

June 2018

Gary says:

"One of the great things about working for a shortline railroad... knowing when the trains run...

Here is the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad train HM06=(Hiline Empties on the 6th day of the month)...with 2 former MRL SD45's and a former SSW SD40T-2 Pulling hard on the 1 Percent grade climbing out of Deep creek up to the High plains of North Central Washington, Photographed Rounding the big curve near Espanola as it crosses under Washington State HWY 2. Train is West bound to Hite with a final destination this day of Coulee City."

Longest Day At Hite

Photo by Gary Durr.

Gary says:

"EWG...East Bound.... Full daylight.... it's 06:30 in the morning ... the longest days of the year... June 20, 2017... and...with a 20 cylinder former MRL SD45 leading. Well seasoned and Highly skilled Engineer Bruce Butler is at the throttle this beautiful morning...The Location... Hite, Washington. A rather large cut of BNSF cars are on the head end of this days train. These were picked up from Govan, Wilbur and Davenport and are destined for interchange to the BNSF at Cheney... They will be cut out at Geiger Jct for the Geiger turn to take to Cheney Washington, while the rest of the train will be shoved back into the Grain facility at Four Lakes to be unloaded."

WRIX 8702 At Four Lakes

Guest post by Bruce Butler.

Here is the power for today's train. SD40-T2 WRIX 8702, SD45-2 EWLX 329, and SD45-2 NIWX 328. 8702 was not running this day as the two SD45-2's provided adequate power (3200 hp each for 6400 total) to move this train.

EWG At Odair And Coulde City

May 29, 2018

I caught the power parked at Odair that morning, and by the time the crew arrived that afternoon, the weather had turned.

 

EWG At Odair And Coulee City

May 10, 2018

EWG Power At Coulee City

April 17, 2018

"Ghost Town Poltergeist"

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

 February 3, 2017

In the dead of night when grave diggers and trainmen earn their living butted SD45’s come to rest in the ghost town of Govan: the crew has died on time. Many moons ago, a thriving community with depot along the 1889 laid Central Washington Railway, Govan is likewise dead save for three horizon-piercing concreted and corrugated elevators; more abandoned homesteads than inhabited; and flee-bitten, howling hounds that roam the channeled scablands infinite. There is no light to see of where black steam-belching-shovels had extracted sand nearby so vital to constructing the railway but for the train’s temporal beam searching the right-of-way and van lights with its relief crew finding the 645’s breaking the damned silence, filling the coulees like the prehistoric waters that flowed here with the industrious sound of railroading that brought forth this place from nothing just as it has sustained its agricultural significance even as the town itself died. Eponymic of R.B. Govan, CWR’s construction engineer, it is but a fly speck on modern Columbia Plateau cartography. Its bustling business district incinerated in 1927, the sum 100 or so residents faded into unrecorded history as Govan’s coup de grâce came in ‘33: US 2 bypassing it by a half mile. The still-standing, believed-haunted schoolhouse shuttered in ‘42; the post office in ‘67 about the time these EMD’s came to life. They’ll soon be in rested hogger’s hands: he’ll crack the throttle breaking deeper into the disquieting quietus as the six-thousand horses rare to pull the slack out of so many drawbars bringing the train further west to posit ravenous empties under grain-gorged spouts far and fewer betwixt this place of shadows and dust, and the abbreviated “CW” terminus, Coulee City. “Hiball!” The throaty roar and rhythmic clickity-clack of steel wheels hitting jointed rail-ends Doppler as the coupled procession disappears into the envelop of night like a wandering poltergeist; its headlight pushes ahead into the unending frozen darkness in search of the next grain-bearing elevator in an all-but-forgotten community rousing the dead and still-living alike. 

“Somewhere East of Eden and West of Creston”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

January 7, 2016

A long way from their former home in the land of fruits and nuts; even further from their windy birthplace a deuce of once bloody-nosed 45’s make 26 unkempt, soon-to-be-loaded with dark northern wheat “scoot” cars follow the undulating “CW” grade laying frozen-prone under drifted snow betwixt the rolling “hills” of Eastern Washington on the steppe of the mighty Columbia from which 4,090-foot Johnny George Mountain and Whitestone Ridge of the Columbia Range rise into the brewing Jovian-like atmosphere preparing another thick blanket of white-cold down even before darkness displaces the diffused luminescence and envelops the near dormant, bitter cold opaline land. 

“Creston Crepusculum” (Redux)

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

June 8, 2017

20:52 – a minute after sunset and Preston Cliburn has his mule train comfortably in deft control: whining – like second gen EMD’s in DB do – two four-foot-'cross ten-paddle grid blowers suck cooling air over the current-dissipating grids commingling it with hot exhaust-distorting chilled summer air, together with a little set pinching the wheels to keep thirty-five loaded at Coulee City, Hartline, and Almira CH’s from bucking and bunching slack. No sweat. With 56 jugs workin', ex-MRL, nee-SP SD45-2’s 329 leading, 328 mid-consist, ex-UP nee-Cotton Belt snoot SD40T-2 8702 trailing ease into the west end of Creston as the sun leaves her fleeting colors in the cumulus clouds behind. But this day’s work ain't done, yet. The crew will continue to move their responsibility eastbound and down the line right up to nihil hour before tying down HL8 to be crewed next day becoming the HL8-2.

2017 EWG Scoot Train At Coulee City

January 26, 2017.