State adds 29 hopper rail cars

Washington State is adding 29 hopper cars to its Grain Train system. The cars will be used on the Central Washington rail line, one-third of the state-owned Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad. The other two lines run through Whitman County.

The Grain Train is a long-standing state program that provides cars for wheat shipments to markets in Seattle and Portland.

Mike Rosswell of the state rail and marine office said the hopper cars were purchased used and refurbished by the state. Cost of the cars was $362,500.

The 29 cars for the CW line increase the state Grain Train fleet to 118 cars.

Rowswell said 27 cars are kept in the Walla Walla area.

The new cars will be used by the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad to haul wheat along the line, which runs from Coulee City to Cheney. Gateway runs trains on the line through an operating contract with the state.

At Cheney, the cars will be switched onto the Burlington Northern Santa Fe main line to Ritzville where they will be dumped into bins at Ritzville’s massive unit train loading facility.

The Ritzville facility allows for fast loading of 110-car trains which qualify for shipping rate discounts.

Port of Whitman County officials, along with Cooperative Agricultural Producers, have been considering installing a similar unit train loader at Oakesdale.

The remaining 62 cars are used by the Palouse River Railroad, a subsidiary of Watco, which runs rail traffic on the Palouse Valley line from Colfax to Hooper and on the Blue Mountain Railroad which runs in northern Columbia County.

The Grain Train fund is funded by a usage surcharge on each car used to haul wheat. That money is collected from railroad operators by the ports of Walla Walla, Whitman and Moses Lake, and goes into the pot for car acquisition and maintenance, meaning surcharges on Whitman County wheat were used to help purchase the new cars for the CW line.

Since the Grain Train was established in 1994, its cars have hauled more than 1.2 million tons of grain from inland fields to coastal ports.

Rowswell said the entire Grain Train program will undergo an effectiveness review this summer.

Washington is the fifth-highest producer of wheat in the nation, Whitman County being the most prolific wheat county in the nation.