Washington Eastern Railroad


The Washington Eastern Railroad is a shortline railroad located in Eastern Washington in the United States. It runs on the CW Branch built by the Northern Pacific Railway from 1889–1890 and was previously used by the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad until 2018. The WER is owned by the Western Group.

History

The Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad was established on June 1, 2007, after the purchase of the CW branch of the Palouse River and Coulee City Railroad by the Washington State Department of Transportation. The branch, which saw low traffic and high deferred maintenance costs, was slated to be abandoned by the railroad. The state purchased the line in February 2007 for $5.6 million, after lobbying from grain growers in the region.
The Inland Northwest Rail Museum was constructed in 2016 in Reardan, Washington, adjacent to trackage owned by EWG. The museum is home to several pieces of historic railroad equipment from Eastern Washington.
EWG went out of business on November 4, 2018, with operations assumed by Washington Eastern Railroad, a new entity operated by the Western Group. The last EWG train ran on November 3, 2018.
The Western Group won the bid from WSDOT to operate the CW Branch on September 4, 2018. In late 2018, WER began building an extension on the Geiger Spur to serve Spokane International Airport and surrounding industrial facilities.

Route

The WER operates on the state-owned CW Branch, which runs from Cheney to Coulee City while roughly parallel to U.S. Route 2. It also operates on the Geiger Spur, owned by the Spokane County government.

Operations

The WER currently hauls scoot trains 1-4 times a week depending on the time of year. It goes out to Coulee City dropping off empty cars at various communities and comes back 1–2 days later picking up those loaded cars and taking them to Highline Grain. After the Grain is unloaded it heads back out and repeats the process.
Every few days they run a Geiger Turn which switches cars around for various customers of the Geiger Spur and it also interchanges with BNSF at Cheney.
Occasionally they will run a Davenport Turn which is a hospital train. It takes broken train cars to Davenport to be repaired and brings the fixed cars to their destination. BNSF will run unit trains over WER trackage from Cheney to Highline Grain once a week to pick up grain and take it elsewhere.