I could plow through my files and come up with specific dates, Holly, but for now I'll just answer a couple of your questions from memory. The lead contamination became a typical who's-to-blame/who's-gonna-pay situation. It's believed that the right of way along the Coeur d'Alene River was potentially worse off than other areas where the lead/zinc ore was carried because some of the roadbed along the river had actually been shored up with mine waste in earlier years. Local land owners insisted that UP should remove darn near all of the fill and replace it with clean material. Between Harrison and Cataldo, the UP roadbed actually serves as a dike in many areas, keeping the river off of adjacent ranch and farm property. It has occasionally failed during spring runoff. Anyway, the ultimate solution was to remove just a thin layer from the top of the entire right of way and cap it with pavement.

Up through the late 1980s, the Chatcolet swing bridge was still manned. Tom Agte, who had previously manned bridges on the Columbia, finished out his career, as I recall, at Chatcolet. He was living in Plummer at the time. I paid him a couple of visits, got some black & white photos of he and his little dog up in the cabin, and of at least one train passing under us. Someday when I have the time and a good high-res neg/slide scanner, I just might put those pictures to use. There was a younger guy who seemed to be doing the graveyard shift; Tom relieved him in the morning. Tom and his dog would jump into a small boat at shore, row or motor out to the swing span, and climb up to the cabin. (I don't recall exactly how Tom got his dog up there.) It was pretty loud inside when he fired up the engine to motor the swing span closed for the approaching local. Didn't seem to bother the osprey who had nested at the outer ends of the trusses. Most of the lift/swing/draw bridges on the Snake and Columbia have long been operated from a central location, but I'm pretty sure Chatcolet was a manned operation right up to the end of UP service east of Plummer.