BN 808 Near Cement

Guest post by Blair Kooistra. 

My pal Tom Carver--the guy who just authored that fantastic book on the Alco Century series of locomotives that just hit the market--disrupted my life one evening when I visited his home in the Interbay neighborhood of Seattle and laid it on me.

Tom was working as a short-haul truck driver, making a couple of trips a week between Seattle and Spokane. And Tom, being a railfan, couldn't help but keep his eyes out trackside when he was on the road.

His big news one day in the late summer of 1980: Burlington Northern was using F-units--multiple F-units in a big power set--on the Coulee City branch west from Spokane. BN had always assigned F7s and F9's out of Yardley in Spokane, largely assigned to helper service on Marias Pass to the east. But with F45s recently assigned to those duties, they became more popular to use on a few of the long-distance local jobs from there: Up to Kettle Falls and over to Republic on the Canadian Border, south on the P&L down to Moscow, Pullman and Lewiston, and west across the wheatfields to Coulee City.

And Tom had photos to prove it!

Well, that completely messed with my mind--BN's use of F-units in the Seattle area were starting to wind down, and F-units on branchlines hauling boxcars of wheat. . . let's go!

I made at least a half-dozen trips over the mountain to chase those damned F-units, almost down to their final days when the last one went into storage in early 1982. It was always with a variety of fellow photographers, and it always was a great time.

Here's one good memory, from my third trip on August 15, 1981. Engineer Jerry Kohliber leans out the cab window of F9 #808 and gives us a big smile as he takes a couple more notches on the throttle of three F9's and a GP7 not far east of Coulee City near the US 2 grade crossing at Cement Siding.

In four decades of retrenchment of railroads in Eastern Washington, amazing the Coulee City branch still survives--eventually bought by the state and operated even today under a contract operator.

No F units, though. But still a good time.

Difference Of Decades Othello

Photos courtesy of Blair Kooistra.

Blair says:
"Difference of decades. . . . 

"The last #200 symbol arrives in Othello, Washington, on March 1, 1980, two weeks before the railroad's final train traversed the transcontinental mainline.  Five GP40s and a GP30 lead the last revenue cars east.

And September 30, 2020, and six empty fertilizer cars arrive at what's left of the Othello yard behind Washington Royal Lines SD45R #331, and ex-Montana Rail Link locomotive and the las SD45 rebuilt by Southern Pacific.  

"Since abandonment this trackage has been owned by Burlington Northern, the State of Washington, and now Columbia Basin Railway. The WRL is the contracted operator for the Port of Royal Slope, which owns the remnants of the Milwaukee Road west of here to Royal City Junction and the five mile branch up to Royal City. Operations are sporadic, but after years and years of trying, the operation is starting to gain a little traction in building traffic in an area where admittedly it's usually easier and cheaper to use trucks.

"One advantage of being old enough to have made both photographs 40 1/2 years apart that the amazement of having experienced the railroad wither and die, then waiting most of a lifetime to have the opportunity to see the rail line come back to life--however tenuously such a revival may be."

1910 Wilson Creek View-3

Courtesy of the Wilson Creek Museum.

1910 Wilson Creek View-2

Courtesy of the Wilson Creek Museum.

1910 Wilson Creek View

Courtesy of the Wilson Creek museum.

Liberty Bell at Wilson Creek-2

Courtesy of the Wilson Creek Museum.

The Liberty Bell traveled through the area on its way to Seattle back in 1915.

Wanapam Dam Construction Yard View

No date, but Wanapum Dam was completed in 1963.