As many of you may be aware the 475 original Milwaukee Road log flats used by the St Maries River Railroad in Idaho are being scrapped.
Ever since the St Maries was formed at the closing of the western lines in 1980 these log flats, most built in the late 1940’s, were used to haul logs from Avery down to St Maries and also from the log landing at Clarkia on the old Elk River branch line down to the mill in St Maries. The mill and the St Maries River RR are owned by Potlatch Lumber Co. (PFI). The Avery line shut down in the very early 1990’s.

After several weeks of talking to a few good folks at Potlatch Headquarters I was able to convince them to save one of the cars as a donation to the WI&M Historic Preservation Group which has been involved with the preservation of the depot at Potlatch, ID and whose town (Potlatch) and railroad (Washington, Idaho and Montana) have a very historic connection to the Milwaukee Road in that part of the country. At one time the Milwaukee Road owned the WI&M. That car was hauled by truck to Princeton, ID and reassembled last week. Hopefully this week it will make its way to Potlatch, there to be displayed with one of the historic Bennett Lumber Thrall Box cars and one of the old wooden WI&M cabooses (X 5). There were many folks involved in the moving of this log flat from St Maries to Princeton and donated much of their time and effort.

As of this writing (Monday evening 1/4/10) there are 25 log flats left out of the original 475 that were in use. There were about 25 or so cars that had roller bearing trucks put on and these 25 are those flats. ALL of the frictions bearing cars have already been scrapped.
From what I know, fifteen of these twenty-five will be scrapped and ten will be stripped of the bunker poles taken off the trucks and used as bridges by Potlatch. That will be the end of these cars that were still operative as of last August.

Just thought I would give an update for those that might have some interest.

The rest of the line that runs from the mill in St Maries over the old Milwaukee mainline to Plummer is still in use hauling the finished timber products for interchange with the U.P. there. The other old Milwaukee Road equipment in the yards is still there, including the Snow Plow, Jordan Spreader, bay window caboose, big hook and etc. The locomotives and switchers are also of Milwaukee Road origin, but apparently the hauling of logs has come to an end. The rails on the Elk River Branch remain in place from St Maries, south to the highway at Bovill, ID, but a General Order has been issued saying that traffic has now ceased.

Regards,
Rolland A. Meyers