Ben Johnson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Many years ago when there were some hearings on
> the UP lines to Tekoa and others, I went to a
> couple of the meetings and a rep from BN commented
> that the quickest way to clear a room in eastern
> Washington and north Idaho was to ask some
> shippers to sign on the dotted line to ship.

In reality, the railroads were trying a form of economic blackmail - "You either contractually commit for X number of carloads per year for Y number of years, or we pull up our rails and go home". Of course, the problem is no one can predict what future crop amounts might come. There could be a down year, yet the shippers would still have to pay for more cars than they might need at any given time. Luckily, the barge lines and truckers don't pull that kind of crap.

Stay classy, railroads!

> The shippers are gonna be hurting if
> the dams ever come out---and the sinister side of
> me kinda hopes they do.

I have no doubt you hope the dams go out and fuel for truckers goes through the roof. It seems only railroaders and foamers wish ill will on their fellow transportation modes.

Problem is, the dams and locks have been scapegoated for railroad failures that would have occurred anyway. The Grangeville line should never have been built through Lapwai Canyon in the first place - it was always going to be an expensive line to maintain, thus was always condembed to a relatively short life. If anything, the creation of the barge port at Lewiston gave the Grangeville line a longer (albeit temporary) lease on life with the 80 ton grain shuttles.

As for the loss of the Moscow-Arrow line, that was mostly a case of BN sticking it to the shippers of the Palouse for their support of the waterways projects. If any of the "unfair barge competition" claims were real, BN would have just pulled all the rail from Marshall south, instead of trying to force all Palouse rail traffic to go north. There was a tremendous opportunity for highly profitable short haul grain shuttles from the Palouse to the Port of Lewiston, but the truncation of Moscow-Arrow meant that cutting edge multimodal approach would never materialize. Also lost was a proposed St Maries to Lewiston log/wood chip service, as well as Lewiston to Puget Sound double stacks via Marshall and Stevens Pass for those ocean carriers who call on Seattle or Tacoma but not Portland.