Moses Lake Port About Halfway To Railroad Right-Of-Way Acquisition

 Moses Lake port about halfway to railroad right-of-way acquisition

Port of Moses Lake officials hope to go out to bid early next year on a contract to build new rail connections and rehabilitate some existing rail to the port and along Wheeler Road.

FILE PHOTO

by CHERYL SCHWEIZER

Staff Writer | October 15, 2024 2:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — Port of Moses Lake officials hope to go out to bid in early 2025 on a project to rebuild railway connections to port property. Commissioners approved the purchase of two parcels at their regular meeting Monday. 

Kim Detrolio, the port’s director of finance and administration, told port commissioners that the purchases approved Monday brought the port about halfway to the goal. The port purchased property for a railroad right of way from AMJ for $324,100 plus closing costs, and a second parcel from Circle C for $170,750 plus closing costs.  

In a later interview Milton Miller, port facilities director, said right-of-way acquisition is moving pretty quickly. 

“We’re hoping to have them all done by Christmas,” Miller said.  

Miller told commissioners there are eight parcels left that require rights of way, with four separate owners. 

The port is not buying entire parcels, just the right of way. 

“Our right of way varies,” Miller told commissioners. “The track itself is only 50 feet wide, but the right-of-way purchase that we’re buying is 100 to 125 feet.”  

In an earlier interview, Miller said five miles of track will be built and about 4.5 miles of existing track will be rehabilitated. The new rail line will reconnect with the BNSF lines near Connell. 

The new section of the rail line will run south of Wheeler Road, cross Wheeler about one to two miles west of State Route 17, run along Road 4 NE and connect with the existing line. The new section will require a bridge across Crab Creek and a rail crossing on Wheeler Road.   

The project should go out to bid early next year, he said, with construction expected to take about two years.  

Once the new rail line is completed, the existing rail line that runs through Moses Lake will be taken out of service. Miller said federal regulations prohibit abandoning the existing line until a new rail line is in place.  

Commissioners approved an eminent domain declaration along with the sale of the AMJ property. Miller said that helps property owners take advantage of a tax break. 

Eminent domain is the ability of a government to compel the sale of land for public purposes.  

“They didn’t potentially want to sell us the property, but we need the property,” Miller said. 

But the property owners are still subject to sales tax, and the eminent domain designation allows that to be waived, Miller said.  

The rail lines through Moses Lake are owned by the Columbia Basin Railroad, and port officials would contract with CBRR for service once the new line is complete, Miller said.   

Bridge Over The Milwaukee

Courtesy of JP3.

NP bridge No. 33. Milwaukee bridge EE806.

Northern Columbia Basin Railroad Project Advertisement For Bids

In those moments where my site actually provides timely news...

Courtesy of the Port of Moses Lake.

September 1, 2026

Bid and contract specs below:

CW Eleanor Turn-Again

Photo courtesy of Blair Kooistra.

Blair says:

"On a beautiful late Indian summer evening, September 16, 1981, a single GP9 is sufficient to forward a dozen empty 40' grain box cars down the Eleanor Spur, a downgraded Northern Pacific branchline which wandered for 18 miles south and east from a connection with Burlington Northern's 8th subdivision branch between Cheney and Coulee City in search of a handful of small-capacity grain elevators in eastern Washington state..

"Operated only during the wheat rush in the late summer and into fall, the westbound CW local would stop and pick up the necessary number of ordered boxcars from the siding at Major, 5 miles east of Davenport, and then, arriving at the junction, cut off the trailing locomotive and the boxcars and make a slow, slow trip spotting cars.

"The line dead-ended at a small elevator at Eleanor. On this evening, the train Mike Sawyer and I followed went as far as Gravelles, 11.1 miles south of Davenport. The elevator track had a capacity of but four cars, and several more than that were loaded and ready to go, shoved out fouling the main track, requiring several saw-by moves to spot the empties and pick up the loads.

"Mike and I left the local to its thing as the sun set. In retrospect, of course, it would have been nice to do some blue hour and night exposures of this little-photographed operation.

"The spur was abandoned at the end of April in 1983. Its light rail restricted equipment to 50 ton capacity boxcars for its one commodity, wheat, in an era where the 40' boxcar was obsolete. In the post Staggers regulatory environment, BN accelerated its program of selling off and abandoning marginal lines, and the Eleanor spur certainly fit this description. Farmers along the Eleanor spur protested of course, but other elevators existed along the CW branch at Davenport, of course, or Reardan (only 5 miles from the end of the spur at Eleanor), or even along the GN mainline a dozen or so miles away to the south.

"For awhile, there were rumors Washington Public Power would build a new coal-fired power plant adjacent to the line, saving it from oblivion, but this never happened.

"The elevators are still in place out there in the wheat fields, but it's been over 40 years since a train rocked and rolled down the old jointed rail to deliver boxcars to elevators."

Valuation Of Washington 14 Ritzville Branch

Thanks to Aaron Schwarz for digging this out.

From the NP Valuation of it's system prepared for the ICC in the 1920s.

The Ritzville Cutoff In 1956?

From a 1956 NP system map.

Quincy Intermodal Terminal To Expand

From the "Columbia Basin Herald."

September 1, 2026

The Ritzville Cutoff in 1909?

From an NP system map.

The Ritzville Cutoff In 1932?

From an NP system map from 1932.