Peggy Turner Wrote:
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> The business at Wilson is inbound fertilizer for
> McGregor Co, a second fertilizer plant Wilbur
> Ellis is also at Wilson and in the past recieved
> inbound loads of fiberglass tanks.

I stand corrected. I thought it was a seed plant per all the CP hoppers there and what looked like dyed wheat seed being dumped out there.

> Busch
> Distributers is a fuel dealer also located at
> Wilson and might be persuaded to get fuel inbound
> by rail.

They'll need to set up a short pipeline and a tap if they do. I used to work for one of Busch's competitors in Moscow, and if I remember correctly they got all their fuel via either Wilma (barge) or Spokane (rail and pipeline). I think Coleman down in Lewiston still gets fuel by rail - there was a funny story about the Wilma fuel depot and why there was no rail offload there for local distrubtion, something about needing to buy shares in the co-op which CSP would do.

The other aspect of Wilson is that it is right across from the proposed new shopping center, and that land occupied by the Wilson accounts might have greater value as commercial property.

> Pullman Grange Supply could also get
> fuel inbound if Watco doesn't rip out the track
> that goes near their tanks.

I do know the State DOT and Pullman city traffic planners are keen on tearing out those tracks across Grand Ave and State St near the old UP depot, should the Pullman-Colfax line be torn out as presumed. Don't know if the Grange Supply would have enough pull to keep the short track in place.

> Whitman County
> Landfill and Latah County Landfill both ship
> containers of trash to Arlington Or, it was one of
> those trucks that was involved in the tragic
> accident.

It's a shame that Idaho allowed the Moscow-Arrow line to be torn out. It ran right by the Latah County landfill, and loading garbage containers on flat cars would have been easy. Also, wasn't the old Pullman garbage center once located along the UP line west of town?

Don't know how the BNSF-UP split of rates would have worked if both landfills had used rail.

> Cutting the line off at Fallon doesn't
> make much sense to me as there is far more
> business at Wilson than there is at Fallon.

My thought was that with the two separate sidings at Fallon the Wilson account(s) might be able to use those sidings for offload as well as being used to load shuttle hoppers. Again, there is the question of the value of the RR ROW through Pullman along north Grand Avenue and the land at Wilson for potential commercial development.

> Uniontown would likely only be viable if the river
> were to shut down for an extended period.

The same can be said of Genesee, which has three times (?) the capacity of the Uniontown elevators. It is interesting that BN pulled out of Genesee soon after the slackwater reached Lewiston, not wanting to try out the radical new concepts of shuttle trains or container on flatcar. Although it's true to some extent that the barging killed off some rail business, it always seemed to me the railroads gave up rather willingly rather than exercise their efficiency potential for bulk grain and later on grain in containers. Remember also that not all grain is heading for the lower Columbia ports - some goes to Seattle and Tacoma where the river barges fear to go, and with the growing market of containerized grain the fact that the Puget Sound ports have more containership calls than Portland means alot more Palouse grain could have gone by rail.