ABOVE: Union Pacific SD9043MAC No. 8287 leads a southbound potash train on August 19, 2010. The lip of the falls is just around the far bend in the river. The low flow is typical of late summer and early fall. RIGHT: The part of the Ayer Sub that skirts Palouse Falls is Track Warrant Control (TWC) territory with automatic block signals, although this particular signal photographed in 2012 has since been replaced to comply with Positive Train Control (PTC) upgrades. Several sections of the Ayer Sub are under Centralized Traffic Control (CTC). OPPOSITE: A northbound manifest crosses the Joso Bridge over the Snake River on May 7, 2014. There are usually at least two manifest trains in each direction daily, sometimes more.


The Ayer Sub begins at Hinkle, Ore.,


site of a huge classification yard, and heads north, cutting cross-country until it reaches the Columbia River near the Washington state line. At Wallula (about 20 miles south of Pasco) the track slices across more fields and sagebrush hills to reach the Snake River, which is followed upstream. At first the rails hug the water’s


edge, then start to climb. At Ayer is a junction where traffic is interchanged with the Great Northwest Railroad, a Watco shortline that operates part of the former Camas Prairie Railroad. The Ayer Sub continues its steady ascent, now clinging to basalt cliffs, as far as Lyons Ferry, where the historic Mullan Military Road, completed in 1860, once crossed the Snake River. The Ayer Sub crosses the Snake here as well, by means of the towering Joso Bridge, among the highest and longest on Union Pacific


46 NOVEMBER 2015 • RAILFAN.COM


system. Just upstream is the mouth of the Palouse River, although the railroad, still climbing, doesn’t come within sight of this modest Snake River tributary until emerging from the north portal of Tunnel 10, by which point the thin, twisting thread of water is far below the track. Four more tunnels come in quick succession, interrupted by immense rock fills and deep, narrow cuts that are themselves like open-topped tunnels. It’s quite a feat of engineering, all the


more impressive for having remained essentially unchanged since completed in 1914. As to the question of why the track is up here, the answer is soon obvious — in five miles someone piloting a jet boat or paddling a canoe up the Palouse River will come to the insurmountable barrier of Palouse Falls. Recently named Washington’s “official state waterfall,” the river plunges 185 feet down a vertical


cliff, and the canyon walls on either side are at least twice that tall. Basically, there is no way out (apart from a steep, sketchy foot path). Thus, the track takes the high road. Unfortunately, it avoids the lip of the falls, but there are plenty of other spectacular landscape features nearby. This entire area is extremely arid, with almost no trees for miles in any direction, so views are territorial. Rail traffic varies, but over the past


five years about six to ten trains per 24- hour period has been the norm. There are manifests, grain trains, potash movements from Saskatchewan, and coal trains from the Powder River Basin. Much of this traffic comes through the Canadian Pacific connection on the Idaho-British Columbia international boundary, so red CP diesels are daily sights on the Ayer Sub. BNSF engines power the coal trains, and Watco diesels of no particular color scheme are in


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