Pleasant Valley Wednesday

The former Union Pacific Pleasant Valley Branch in the Heart of the Palouse

In late June of 2012, I had the extremely rare opportunity (for me, at least) to spend several days in the Palouse region of Eastern Washington and North Idaho with the express purpose of “chasing trains”.  Normally, my paid vacation days are spent on family-related travel, so having a few days to my own devices is not that common and I intended to take full advantage of the situation.

The primary reason for my visit was to attend the Milwaukee Road Historical Association being held in Moscow, Idaho that year.  The convention was scheduled to begin on Thursday afternoon (June 28th), but I had arranged to leave my home in Richland, WA already Wednesday morning to maximize my time in the Palouse.  I had two primary targets in mind for the trip:  1) the former Union Pacific lines leading east out of Hooper, WA, now owned by the State of Washington and operated by the Palouse River & Coulee City RR (PCC), and 2) the former Washington, Idaho & Montana Ry (WI&M) line between Palouse, WA and Harvard, ID, which is currently operated by the Washington & Idaho RR (WIR).

I knew that both railroads operated these particular routes infrequently, usually only once per week.  I had done some prior intelligence gathering, and based on this and prior experience, I guessed the PCC train would be running its “Grain Shuttle” on Wednesday and the WIR would serve the WI&M on Thursday.  Still, there was no guarantee that I would be in the right place and time to follow either train.  Railfanning the Palouse always involves a great deal of uncertainty and calculated risk.

Sidebar:  The “Grain Shuttle” program helps ensure that local wheat farmers have access to enough State-owned (or leased) grain hoppers that they can move the bulk of their harvest to market with few interruptions.  And, by hauling full “grain blocks” of 26 or 52 cars, using Union Pacific trackage rights from Hooper to a barge loading facility on the Columbia River at Wallula, the railroad is able to charge farmers the lowest possible rates.  In operation, the shuttle runs on a weekly cycle; the empty hoppers run from Wallula to Hooper on Mondays and then are delivered to the loading elevators east of there on Tuesdays.  After the hoppers are loaded on Tuesday afternoon and evening, the Wednesday train gathers the loads and brings them down to Hooper for another mainline run on Thursday back to the barge elevators at Wallula.

Washington State's "Grain Shuttle” program helps local wheat farmers move their harvest to market 

Since there are no other trains operating on the PCC’s Hooper lines any other time of the week, Wednesday would be my best shot for witnessing the shuttle train in action on the grain branches.  Rising ridiculously early that morning, I departed Richland about 3:30 am to try and arrive at Hooper close to 5 am.  Again from previous experience, I knew the PCC crew likes to get an early start, and I didn’t want to miss any of the action.  Once at Hooper, however, the next step is figuring out where to find the train.  The rails to the east run parallel with Highway 26 as far as the turnoff to La Crosse, and then country roads are sufficient to keep the line toward Winona in view for all but the last couple miles. 

Not seeing the train along this portion of the route was a good thing, since my main photography locations were farther to the east.  By the time I reached Winona, the sun was up and the crew was likely on their power, already working their way back from whichever elevator had been their last stop the day before.

The catch is that the line splits in two at Winona.  The southernmost of the two routes still has tracks in place as far as Colfax, but the only customers are the elevators at Endicott, Thera, Diamond and Mockonema (there’s also a fertilizer dealer at Mockonema that receives chemical tank cars).  This was once Union Pacific’s mainline to Spokane, but it has been downgraded and abandoned in sections over the years.  It’s been a long, long time since the last PCC train made its way down the hill into Colfax, and that’s too bad.

The more northerly route is the former Pleasant Valley branch, which once served as a low-grade bypass around the Palouse River canyon where Colfax lies.  The PV terminates now at Thornton and serves elevators there and at Sunset, St. John and Willada.  In addition, there are two elevators at Winona itself that ship via the grain shuttle.

So, with two possible lines the train could be running on, and the clock ticking, knowing which way to turn here required a quick bit of reasoning:  Since the crew probably spotted empty hoppers at one or more elevators on each of these two legs of the branch yesterday, there was a good chance I’d see the train on both routes at some point during the day.  The two or three locations where I most hoped to photograph the train were on the PV, and if I missed out on those shots because I was putzing along the Colfax line to find a train that’s not there, I would kick myself later.  However, if I missed out on photos along the Colfax line while searching for the train on the PV, it would not be as great a loss.  So, I headed along the PV toward St. John.

Reaching St. John with no sight of the train so far was a good thing, I hoped.  I have been fooled before.  I continued north toward Sunset and Thornton, when I spied a locomotive’s headlights heading toward me with another engine and a handful of loaded hoppers in its wake.  After a cautious U-turn, the chase was on!!

Of course, chase is a relative term.  With allowed speeds of about 15 mph on the rail line, it was not difficult to take a few photos as the train passed one location, and then move forward to the next potential photo site without any real hurry.  The first stop for the train was at St. John to add a few more hoppers to its train.  The track arrangement here was not easy for the crew to negotiate, and it required several moves that temporarily stopped traffic on Highway 23, right at the apex of the horseshoe curve the tracks form as they wind through town.

 Temporarily stopping traffic in St. John at the apex of a horseshoe curve

The Palouse River & Coulee City draws its locomotives from a fleet owned by its parent company, Watco.  These all carry the same WAMX initials, but otherwise have little family resemblance, wearing a wide variety of paint schemes from former owners, including Amtrak silver, BN Cascade Green, and Watco’s once-standard orange and black.  I was very pleased to find that the lead locomotive on today’s train still wore Union Pacific’s Armor Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray.  With all the possible color combinations the WAMX fleet could produce, it was very nice I could capture a little of the appropriate color on a former UP line.

I could easily see that the lead locomotive, now numbered WAMX 5012, was a former Chicago & Northwestern GP-50 that became part of the UP fleet when they absorbed the C&NW.  The signature bell mounted on the nose was a dead giveaway.  However, although I’ve often seen this type of bell referred to as a “gong” bell because of its shape, the tinging sound it made was decidedly less than gong-like.  For the record, the trailing engine, WAMX 3523, was a former Pennsylvania Railroad GP-35 that previously carried the number PCC 2353.  (“Fun Fact”:  In March of 2000, I had an article published on the PCC in Railfan & Railroad Magazine.  PCC 2353 was the lead locomotive on the cover photo of that issue.)

With the train all made up at St. John, the crew prepared to make its run out of the valley and over the modest-height hills surrounding St. John.  I moved on ahead to a choice vantage point overlooking the tracks as they form an S-curve near the summit of the climb.  I was very pleased with how the resulting photos turned out; I only wish the train had been long enough to really string out through the curve.

"I only wish the train had been long enough to really string out through the curve"

From there, I continued leapfrogging the train on its journey with only a brief pause while the crew switched the large elevator at Willada to fill out their train with additional grain loads.  Once they arrived at Winona, the crew dropped most of the train on the PV leg of the wye track, and then pulled a single shuttle car from the small elevator in Winona itself.

At this point, the crew tied down their locomotives and hopped in their highway vehicle.  Following typical shortline operations in this part of the country, the crew consists of an engineer and conductor.  However, the engineer is usually by himself in the locomotive cab while the conductor drives along the parallel highway, running ahead to set up switching moves and to perform frequent safety roll-bys at each road crossing.

Having a truck available increases the crew’s flexibility as evidenced by their next move.  I followed the crew vehicle east a few miles past Endicott to Thera, where two more locomotives were tied down with a string of freshly loaded hoppers on the elevator track.  I quickly realized the crew had brought four engines up from Hooper to Winona the day before, and then had split their power to drop empties along both branches.

Picking up more loaded hoppers at Endicott

Now following the same scheme in reverse, the crew started up these two motors and proceeded with coupling up to the loaded cars.  Trundling west now at the same 15mph pace, the crew stopped at Endicott to pick up more cars before completing this leg of their run at Winona.  As on the PV line, I found multiple locations to photograph this train due to its slow speed.

At Winona, the crew did not hesitate to couple up all four locomotives, with the 5012 still in the lead, and merge their two trains into one.  They moved so quickly, in fact, that before I knew it I had missed out on a chance to snap one of my desired photos.  There is a high bluff to the south of the wye track at Winona, and it’s from this vantage that another photographer, Blair Kooistra, shot a photo in 1992 that I admire greatly and had hoped to replicate during this trip.  But, by the time I found the right spot, the crew already had the full length of their train strung around the wye with the engines well past the spot where Blair shot the earlier train.  As a consolation, I got some good shots of the four engines heading up the Palouse River Valley, one of which was later printed in Trains Magazine.

"The crew already had the full length of their train strung around the wye..."

From here, I raced ahead to photograph the train approaching and cruising through La Crosse.  I really wanted to shoot photos on the route back to Hooper, but I also didn’t want to press my luck.  My plan for the rest of the weekend hinged on staying in a particular campground in the mountains east of Moscow, and there was some concern that if I didn’t head that way soon, I might miss out on a campsite.  So, as the train headed under Highway 26 and made a right turn toward Hooper, I made a left at the highway instead, hoping that all my other plans would go as smoothly as they had this day.  I was not to be disappointed.

To be continued . . .