TOP: Wispy clouds dot the sky as WAMX 5012 begins the climb from Sunset over the final hill to Thornton on August 23, 2011. RIGHT: WAMX 5012 slumbers on the elevator track at Thera on September 7, 2008. OPPOSITE: WAMX 5012 and 4043 are mere yards short of reaching the summit of the climb from Juno to the north rim of Pleasant Valley.


at Winona and running northeast to reconnect at Seltice, south of Tekoa. The OR&N fell into receivership in


1894 and emerged in 1896 as the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company. One of the first tasks for new leadership was to eliminate mainline operations over Alto Pass, and a water-level route along the Snake River from Wallula to Riparia was opened in December 1899. By the early 1900s UP had gained firm control of the railroad, and in 1910 consolidated all its northwestern subsidiaries into the Oregon–Washington Railroad & Navigation Company (OWR&N). Concurrently, a new mainline was surveyed to bypass all of the curvy, hilly Palouse trackage and shave an incredible 54 miles off the Wallula–Spokane route. In 1914, the OWR&N opened a brilliantly engineered route that began climbing away from the Snake River shore at Ayer, crossed the river on the


32 JANUARY 2017 • RAILFAN.COM


massive Joso Viaduct, sliced through the basalt cliffs of the Palouse River Canyon, and ran 75 miles northeast through the eastern Washington scablands to enter Spokane from the west. The 1899 and 1914 construction form the backbone of today’s Ayer Subdivision, and would ultimately spell doom for much of the original Palouse trackage.


Contraction and Competition Abandonments in the Palouse began


in 1948 when the track on Alto Pass was removed, severing the original Pendleton–Spokane mainline. Local service to online communities south of the pass continued via the original line through Walla Walla, and service north of the pass was routed along the newer Ayer route. There was little change north of the Snake River until the late 1970s, when the Interstate Commerce Commission granted approval to


abandon the west end of the 1884 line between Connell and Hooper Junction. Railroad industry deregulation following passage of the Staggers Act in 1980 brought immediate changes. Most of the 1886 mainline from Riparia to LaCrosse was pulled up in November 1980, and in quick succession other branches south of the Snake were truncated. Shipment of agricultural products by truck to barge docks on the Columbia and Snake Rivers grew steadily in the 1980s, drawing a core revenue source away from the railroads. Facing dwindling traffic and the


burden of maintaining three routes from Spokane to Hooper Junction, in April 1991, UP abandoned both the original mainline from Colfax to Fairfield and the bypass from Thornton to Seltice. A year and a half later, more than a century of Union Pacific operation in the heart of the Palouse came to an


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76