CW Trainorders-1

 

All For Townsites

From the "Spokesman Review."

February 15, 1896

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 😂.

Coach Fares CW Branch Spokane To Coulee City

 

WER At Hite

Photo by Steven J. Brown.

Washington Eastern SD40-2 3588 (built 1975 as UP 8079 to UP 3588, retired 2021) leads at Hite, Washington - September 29, 2020.

1979 BN Station Revenues-Spokane Division

 

WER At Hite

Courtesy of Blair Kooistra.

September 2020

Blair says:

"Morning shadows are long across the freshly-cut wheat at Washington Eastern’s “Scoot" grain shuttle pauses to add a third locomotive to get it across the undulating wheatfields of the land west of Spokane at the elevator siding of Hite."

 

BN 724 CW Local

Courtesy of Tom Carver.

September 1980

"The CW (Central Washington) local, aka the Coulee City Turn, is shown here westbound between the elevators at Hite, in the background, and Reardan, WA. This line, from Cheney to Coulee City, was more formally known as BN's 8th Subdivision Branch Line of the Spokane Division. Some will say that six F-units and a Geep is too much power for their liking. Granted, but the sound was incredible! After the Pacific Division F's were retired, these were among BN's last F-units to continue operating, all based out of Parkwater in Spokane. These same F's were also dispatched east to Marias Pass for helper service."

Hand Drawn CW Map

Drawn by Robert Scott for a feature on the Eastern Washington Gateway he was working on at the time.

1983 BN Washington Grain Elevator Directory E-M

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

BN 1975 Station Revenues C-H

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

Last Run Of The PCC On The CW?

Guest post by Leland Weiss. 

See his work and photos over at Lost Rail. 

Here are a few shots of the last PCC operation. This was their first train out on the line after the pseudo-embargo in summer 2006 (if I recall correctly). The first image I'm pretty sure is Hite, the other two are west of there but I'm not completely clear on where. 

There is an interesting story to the photos. I was still in school at WSU and the Watco had embargoed the line out to Coulee City. They even had cars stored on the east end of the line with seemingly no intent to serve any of the elevators. I believe this was at the start of their conflicts with the state of WA, trying to get money to fund repairs to some of their lines. I was under the impression at the time that they were basically holding this line hostage and were claiming that there were no active shippers on the line.

Then, one of the elevators actually ordered up some cars and BNSF spotted them in Cheney. So Watco cleaned out the storage cars and ran this train west out along the line. The farmers were happy to see it back again as I recall. To them, the grain trains were an important part of the harvest and had been missing up to that point.

As they went west, they ended up flagging the occasional crossing (Davenport comes to mind)

as they had deactivated some of the highway flashers.

Well, from there, the state contracted with EWG and the line has been in operation ever since.

“Leavin’ Hite ~ 45’s on the Move”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

March 1, 2017

About an hour before sunset and the refraction of light within and through a veil of cloud cover makes for a surreal winter scene. Engineer Jerry Miller is poised to swing his butted 45’s down and ‘round the bend westward. He and his conductor have just spotted five covered hoppers under the Hite spout. With everything buttoned up, handbrakes spun on the spot, Fred hung, a quick set and release, the conductor gives Miller the highball to proceed into a boreal martianscape. 

1917 NP AFE Hite Track Extension

Courtesy of the NPRHA.

“Dust to Dust”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

August 15, 2017

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:19
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On a still warmed sunsetting August day, suspended in the melted margarine sky sediment stirred up by combines harvesting wheat turns to ever so slightly drifting dust cloaking a westbound Eastern Washington Gateway Scoot Train taking the rise just west of Hite where, diesels grumbling, the head-end bids good evening to the “Three Sisters,” then two long, one short, one long for Stroup Road. The Sisters? Three out-of-place trees. In the middle of nowhere but wheatland: as far as the eye can reach. And those in-tow 4750 CH’s? They’ll find their way to Reardan – the next station – and “spots” on down the line where they’ll fill with the very harvest collected by sweat-faced men and their colossal combines.

BN Caboose At Hite

Photo courtesy of Rick Morgan.

Rick says:

"Westbound grain empties on the CW branch headed for Coulee City at Hite WA on 4 August 1990."

Galloping Goose

From the "Spokesman Review."

February 26, 1950

1912 NP AFE Rail Relay Hite-Mondovi

Courtesy of the NPRHA.