Big Bend Railroad History

Thursday, January 22, 2026

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?

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

BN 6601 At Malaga

Guest post by Blair Kooistra.

My first trip--accompanied by Brian Ambrose--to the wonderful terrain east of Wenatchee on the former Great Northern, on July 8, 1978. We got into the crew change point at Wenatchee about noon and then went east towards the crossing of the Columbia River about a dozen miles out of town at the siding of Malaga--a great place to spend the afternoon with the curves and river and basalt cliff backdrops.

Here comes a westbound manifest train out of Malaga. Apart from a single high-wide Boeing load on the head end and a few woodchip loads it was mostly empty bulkhead flatcars and double-door boxcars all bound for reloading with lumber on the west side of the Cascades.

Can't complain about the power up front: The second F45 on the roster--former Great Northern--leads a pair of SD45s. We certainly could have chased this train back home over the pass, but there were more trains coming, and who'd want to pass up on that?

This day trip led to several trips that month to Stevens pass and a trip two weeks later with Michael Douglas Sawyer--who'd I met the day before--which resulted in one of those "tales from the road" as teenagers you'll remember for the rest of your life. . .and just make a new friendship that much stronger.