For those who may not know, the Eastern Washington Gateway RR operates a 109 mile Washington state owned rail line between the eastern Washington towns of Cheney and Coulee City. Traffic is almost exclusively grain. Loads move east to a BNSF connection in Cheney. Operations are based out of Davenport, roughly half way between Cheney and Coulee City. Three EMD SD45's are the primary motive power.

Yesterday (12/23/2009) I had the privilege of being the "hogger" (ie "Engineer") of the last scheduled EWG train move for the year 2009. We gathered grain loads from elevators at Coulee City, Hartline, Hanson, and Almira. The resulting 60 car train was then taken to Davenport where it was tied down for the holidays. Here are a few pictures from that trip. Captions are UNDER each picture



It was a beautiful cold winter day with mostly clear blue skies. We have a coal train which is stored on the mainline between Coulee City and the station of Cement. When we handle grain cars into Coulee City we use the siding at Cement to move the coal train east around the grain train. Here we see the reverse move; the initial grain loads from Coulee City have been brought into Cement with the 375. They have been put into the siding at Cement and the coal train is now backing west to clear Cement so that we can proceed east with the grain train.



There are some stored centerbeam cars on the headend of the coal train. We added the 8924 to our train as the trailing unit after the coal train was safely tied down.



After adding loaded grain cars to our train at the stations of Hartline and Hanson, we are now picking up more loads at Central Washington Grain Growers in Almira. The 8925 had been left at Almira when the empties were spotted. It has just been started. I left it isolated and idling while we did our switching so that it could come up to operating temperature without being loaded.



Here we are picking up loads at the Almira Farmers Warehouse elevator. Our grain train is on the left. The 8925 was put "online" when we were ready to leave Almira. We will leave here with 60 loads and 8925's 3600 horsepower will be needed.



The track east of Govan is one of the few places on the line where you can see the entire train. In this view looking back from the 375, the 60 cars stretch out in the distance make an impressive sight.

Our railroad, built on the cheap in the 1890's, resembles a roller coaster in places and we really need the power of those big SD45's. They are every bit as good today as the day they left the EMD plant some 40 plus years ago. I am constantly amazed at how well they pull! All 3 came to EWG from Montana Rail Link, well known for the superb condition of their motive power. I wonder what the people who built and ran this line in the 1890's would think if they could see the trains and motive power we are using today! They would be amazed.

I hope you have enjoyed this brief story about the operation of one train.

Bruce Butler
Otis Orchards WA.