George, we just drove through the Palouse yesterday on our way home from a Labor Day weekend camp-out at Lyons Ferry State Park, WA (alongside the Snake River in the shadow of UP's Joso Bridge).

The line west of Pullman is not the last one left in the area, if by "area" you mean the Palouse itself. But if you mean the last line running west from Pullman, yes it is the last one. W&I still has an active rail link northeast from Pullman to Palouse, and then on north to Marshall. I'm not aware of any potential customers west of Pullman, at least not until you reach Colfax. Patterson, Farnsworth, or others closer to that area would know.

In my opinion, and based on historical operations, the line west of Pullman would be important only to restore a competitive connection via UP at Hooper Junction for outbound peas and lumber and inbound fertilizer. It would have limited opportunity for outbound grain due to the 3-percent grade climbing west out of Colfax. The alternative to facing this steep hill would be to build a connection up north between Thornton and Oakesdale, something which has been proposed but left on the drawing board for now.

You're right; not all rail lines must be saved. Exploring the Palouse can be a heart-breaker. So many abandoned grades crisscrossing each other in scenery and settings that look more like a model railroad gone wild than real life. But with the manner in which Palouse grain is now moved to port, only a fraction of the track and loading facilities are really needed. Between Hooper and Thornton alone, we saw quite a few towns where the elevators are dormant and the loading tracks rusted over or holding stored boxcars, autoracks, and container wells. Grain loading for that area has been consolidated to St. John, Sunset, and possibly one more small elevator, but the big business is at the high-capacity loader in Thornton. This grain all moves west toward Hooper Junction and transfers into barges near Wallula.

Elevator consolidation and the recent advent of unit grain trains on these branches has apparently taken away what was left of grain hauling on UP's Wallace and Fairfield branches. Grain that used to be loaded into hoppers at Fairfield is now being trucked west to Spangle or Plaza, where W&I has been filling those big BNSF unit trains. The days of UP Geeps lugging blocks of wheat out the north end of the Palouse may finally be over.