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 😂.

WSDOT Manager Says PCC Railroad Progressing

From the "Columbia Basin Herald."

June 21, 2006

Quad County Regional Transportation Plan 2017-2037

Just the railroad parts of the document.

 

 

Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad, Inc.—Acquisition Exemption— Burlington Northern Railroad Company

 

Washington State DOT-Acquisition Exemption-PCC

 

2023 Funding For State Of Washington PCC System

This is as close to timely news as this page might get!

September 20, 2023

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.

State Agrees To Purchase Railroad

From the Moscow-Pullman "Daily News."

February 9, 2007

Rail Line Runs Again

From the "Spokesman Review."

August 22, 2006

PCC Train At Mondovi

Courtesy of Lauren Scrafford.

Lauren says:

"Palouse River and Coulee City, PCC 2353 leads a W/B 49 car freight through the S curve west of Mondovi, WA on October 3, 2005 with WAMX 4018 & BLMR 799. This W/B had 48 XTY grain hoppers for distribution on the west end of the line and 1 flatcar loaded with John Deere Farm Tractors. We followed this one from Cheney to Coulee City."

2000 PCC Mondovi

Photographer unknown.

April 10, 2000

PCC Power At Coulee City

Courtesy of Jim Spurway.

State Agrees To Purchase Railroad

From the Moscow Pullman "Daily News."

February 9, 2007

2015 to 2025 PCC Strategic Plan