Henry Villard used the same chief locating engineer for all kinds of projects on both the OWRN and the west end of the NP at the same time. The poor engineer was running around from one project to the next all the time, and important decisions were left to inexperienced subordinates with bad results. In the end there were several unfortunate errors made in the locating of both NP and OWRN lines that were either rectified later or continue to plague railroads to this day. One of the more famous of these was where the OWRN took to the hills between The Dalles and Rowena, OR. Harriman later put the railroad along the river where it should have been in the first place. You can drive the original grade, as it's now old US 30 west of The Dalles. The entire Lakeside sub is a prime example of bad location. The locating engineers didn't cover the ground like they should have, and missed a very obvious route UP would later use. Had NP engineers looked a little farther east, they would have realized that by making a right turn at Connell they could have followed a vast coulee to Hooper and then Cow Creek all the way to Cheney on a perfectly steady grade. Instead they located a line full of curves and grades that continues to challenge BNSF to this day. NP was all too happy to have the parallel SP&S line built, as they would use that line to bypass their own horrible mistake. They even went to the trouble to build coal docks for NP locomotives on the SP&S (which burned oil for fuel). The two primary issues of the SP&S was rockfall in @#$%& Canyon and water issues in the deep cuts between Marshall and Cheney (the ditches ran like twin rivers during the spring). But instead of rectifying the mistakes of the past by combining the best parts of the NP and SP&S, the SP&S line fell victim to the multitude of shortsighted moves during the mid-1980's (closing Stampede, tearing up Snoqualime, selling the MRL and Yakima lines).