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Palouse River and Coulee City; Central Washington Line

The Palouse River and Coulee City, Central Washington branch was purchased from BNSF in September of 1996 by WATCO. This line was originally the Central Washington Railroad Co (1888-1898) and later became the Washington Central Railway Co.(1898-1914). It was a non operating subsidiary of the Northern Pacific, which was sold to the NP in June of 1914. The line was operated by the PCC from 1996 until June 1 of 2007. The state of Washington DOT purchased the line in February of 2007 and it is currently leased to Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad(U.S.Rail Partners Ltd.). The line currently operates from Cheney west 107.8 miles to Coulee City, Washington. The line was originally completed to Adrian. Almost all of the traffic on line are outbound grain movements and they are interchanged with the BNSF at Cheney.

Palouse River and Coulee City 4229 Deep Creek, WA

PCC 4429 leads 56 empty grain hoppers west at Deep Creek, WA in 2001. This was a fairly dark overcast spring day with low clouds. 4229 had set outs at Hite, Creston, Govan, Almira and Coulee City on this date. It was generally slow orders from Cheney to Deep Creek, where these 3 EMD GP 30's are accelerating towards Hite.

PCC 2353 Mondovi October 2005

This was a nice autumn day in October of 2005 just west of the elevators at Mondovi. This turned out to be a nice shot of the S curve. PCC 2353 leads 1 load of John Deere tractors for the farm implement dealer in Coulee City and 52 empty grain hoppers for loading at Almira and Coulee City. The line was embargoed soon after this by WATCO. WATCO claimed they were loosing money operating the line. At the same time WATCO was trying to sell the line to the state of Washington. Eventually WATCO started operating the line again in August of 2006 and sold the line to the state of Washington in February of 2007.

WAMX 9564 switching at Govan, WA May 2007

Here are WAMX 9564 and 4013 both former Canadian National GP40-2LW's switching the elevators at Govan. The crew has just spotted 4 cars. They also had set outs at Almira (24) and Coulee City (24), this day. This is the last trip that I made following the Palouse River and Coulee City in May of 2007. About 10 days later Eastern Washington Gateway took over the operation of the line. click here to return to the main page