GN 5018 At Wenatchee

 

E-4 At Othello

 

Railroad Route Finally OK'd

From the "Columbia Basin Herald."

June 30, 2020

It's A Mess

From the "Grant County Journal."

March 8, 2010

The War That Never Was; The Coulee City Railroad War

From the Coulee City "News & Standard."

February 11, 2009

CBRW GP38s Arrive At Western Rail

Guest post by Blaize Merryman.

December 14 and 15, 2025.

2 Ex CBRW Locomotives got delivered to the Western Rail shops at Airway Heights, Washington. 

Specifically, engines #2087, EMD GP38, & #2184, EMD GP38. 

These engines recently got replaced by Ex Spokane, Spangle & Palouse #3903 and #3904, which are both GP39-3s and are now operating on the Central Washington Railway. 

BNSF's Lind Turn dropped the engines off at Cheney, Washington for the Washington Eastern Railway to take to the Western Rail Facility in Airway Heights, which involved some switching to get the locomotives inside the facility, pulling out an additional 3 locomotives to be able to shove the 2 "new" engines into the facility. 

Speaking of, the 538 locomotive has an interesting new look to it!

 

Port Of Quincy Helping To Improve Freight Movement

From the "Columbia Basin Herald."

February 6, 2014

Onto The Branch

Courtesy of Tom Carver.

"The CW local is swinging off the Spokane Division's 1st Subdivision mainline onto the 8th Sub. branch line at Cheney, WA. This is also the division point between the Spokane and Portland Divisions for the !st Sub. mainline, resetting to mile 0.0 on the Portland Div. from mile 279.3 on the Spokane Div. The whitish-grey substance is volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens."

Chasing the CW in 1980

Guest post by Brian Elchlepp. 

BN 808 leads an eastbound freight on the Coulee City Branch in October of 1980. 

At this time this F-9 and several others had been recently bumped from Marias Pass helper service and were working out of Parkwater for a short time before being retired.  Myself and a couple of others from the west side of the mountains made the early morning trek to the Eastern Washington branch to catch the action. 

Starting near the west end of the line and working it's way back east, this crew and train spent the day picking up loaded 40 foot boxcars full of grain with the train growing in size as it went. 

This one was good chase, as I recall. 

I believe that we were just west of Davenport where the line closely parallels highway 2 when I grabbed this pacing short from Blair Kooistra's car.  

This was originally a color slide, but the original has faded over time, so I've converted the image to B&W. I have included both for comparison. This is from old Non-Kodak slide film that is fading fast. 

45 years - Man where does the time go?