I find it odd that W&I was so cash starved that they felt it necessary to remove about 80 yards of track from Pullman to fix their most recent derailment, yet can simultaneously afford to suddenly build a new siding for car storage. Meanwhile the lumber mill on the south end of the line was told that it had to spend thousands of dollars of its own money to fix the tracks serving it, and now has nothing to show for it but slow, crappy unreliable service. I remember reading in a past issue of Trains Mag about how one of the owners of the W&I was promised a new Camaro if he could get car loading above a cretin number, and that he won the bet and got the car. Interesting that as soon as that bet was won everything on the W&I went to crap. Was that all this RR ever meant to its owners, just a stupid bar bet?

Meanwhile the state seems to think that the McCoy Grain facility was the answer to all the railroads problems, and cares nothing about any other customer on the line. At their public meetings a few years ago the state reps had every answer ready about how portions of the line could be converted to trails, but was unable to answer any questions about how they could improve the physical condition of the RR or about how they could work to attract new customers. My favorite part was how they went so far as to declare the south end of the RR "not necessary for future rail service" even though the last train had left Moscow only a few months prior!

What a joke this state ownership/private operator partnership has been! I'm just counting the days until everything south of Oakesdale is torn out. W&I has turned out to be a sad excuse for an operator if there ever was one.