Is anybody familiar with the BNSF Railways in the Tri-Cities, (Kennewick, Richland and Pasco) WA and the railroad yards is located in Pasco and after the railroad bridge at the Columbia River one of the railroads is going southbound towards the Columbia Gorge on its way to Vancouver, WA and the other railroad is going towards the Cascades on its way to Seattle, WA
Plus we have a minor railway for Union Pacific in the Tri-Cities.
Yes. What is your real question?
Anyways the BNSF railroads going towards Yakima and the Cascades actually used to be the Washington Central Railroad but since they expanded the railroad tracks somewhere along the Cascades they decided to change the name, I didn’t find that out until about a year ago.
The former line to Pasco is the SP&S (Spokane Portland & Seattle) The line that was the Washington Central was originally the NP ( Northern Pacific) line the SP&S line west to Spokane is now a bike trail. The NP line is the BNSF route to Spokane used by Amtrak for the Empire Builder Portland Section.
The line you refer to as the WCRC (Washington Central Railroad Company) was leased to the WCRC by the BN when they closed the NP line over Stampede Pass. Well, they decided to open it up again and cancelled the lease the WCRC had.
The line over Stampede, down the Yakima River Valley to Pasco and then up to Spokane is the original line into the NorthWest built by the NP in the 1880’s. The line that goes down the Columbia through Wallula Gap and into Oregon is the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company line from Portland to Pasco. It then was renamed the Oregon-Washington Railway and Navigation Company (the O-Dub) and was owned by the Union Pacific. In the early 1900’s, the SPS was built from Vancouver, WA to HillYard in Spokane as a joint venture between the GN and the NP in an effort to keep the Portland traffic off of the UP. It stays on the Washington side to Vancouver and is called the North Bank. The Camas Prairie heads East parallel to the Snake heading towards Lewiston, Idaho.