end when the remaining trackage from Hooper Junction to Moscow and Winona to Thornton were sold to Watco’s Blue Mountain Railroad.
The Modern Shortline Era Watco’s new lines were operated as
the Palouse River Railroad until 2000, when the company purchased the former Northern Pacific CW and P&L Branches from Burlington Northern and consolidated the entire 300-mile eastern Washington system under the PCC banner. However, decades of deferred maintenance and declining traffic could not be overcome by Watco’s streamlined operations, and the company found itself in possession of hundreds of miles of track that it could neither maintain effectively nor run profitably. The threat of abandonment loomed. With the remaining Palouse rail infrastructure at risk of being lost for
good, WSDOT entered the picture in the early 2000s. Analysis revealed that state- funded acquisition and rehabilitation of the rail lines would be economically justifiable compared to the alternative of upgrading state highways that were being torn apart by agricultural traffic. The state purchased the PV Hooper Branch from Watco in 2004 and completed acquisition of the former NP lines in 2007. Contract operators were engaged to run the lines, with the PV Hooper continuing to be operated by Watco and the two NP branches leased by other interests. These arrangements have since
proven successful for the WSDOT operators. System-wide carloads have nearly doubled since 2007, and state- funded track improvements enabled private development of two new shuttle loading facilities on the former Northern Pacific branches.
Along the Line
The tiny town of Hooper sits in a coulee alongside the Palouse River, its skyline dominated by two grain elevators which no longer receive rail service. Across from town, the Ayer Sub runs along a shelf above the river, and high on the north slope of the coulee lies the abandoned Spokane, Portland & Seattle mainline. The Hooper Sub follows the south bank of the river east from Hooper, with few public access points available, before turning up the Willow Creek drainage. A short distance east of Blaze the
line crosses Willow Creek three times in quick succession on wood trestles. After ducking under the highway at Pampa, the track climbs a short grade into LaCrosse, where the wye connecting with the old mainline to Riparia is still in place. The first online customer, a Ritzville Warehouse Co. elevator, is located on the east leg.
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