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Washington seeking operator for former Milwaukee Road line
And one forever will wonder at two things about the Milw. Lines West: should it have been built; and abandoned?
Will the operator get posession of TSWR #B-2070 which has been sitting at Royal City since the line was “abandoned” the last time?
Guse,
There’s a realization that running and maintaining and making up operating deficits for a shortline RR costs less than maintaining and reconstructing roads damaged by grain and other trucks where there are long distance trips on rural roads that are state maintained.
A 50 car grain train is say, about 150 to 200 loaded trucks and they do have to go back for their next load…Summed up:300 to 400 trucks and propane and fertilizer and…
A TRAINS article said an eastern Washington line formed from a big-road’s branchline was justified and nourished for mostly that reason…in 1 mag’ of the last 10 yrs. or so.
Isn’t this a situation of putting the cart before the horse and hoping the horse is up to the task? The line shut down due to a lack of business. What does government do? Advertise the area to potential new business? Of course not. Instead, try to find somebody willing to operate a line with no business. How dumb can you get? If they want to do this right, populate the area with business first. The railroad will follow when the demand is there for its services. No sensible investor is going to revive a railroad with nothing in need of moving. It seems most railfans forget that freight railroads are not there for the railfans. Freight railroads are there to turn a profit.
Glad to see you are such an expert in this situation (and seemingly every other rail scenario around the country and abroad) Mr. Guse.
Hopefully my sarcasm is clear
Great news!
You guys get off of the gues. He cant help it that he thinks he knows all things railroad. Its been said if you build it they will come. This railine has been there for a very long time and theres no business on it. Why does the state of washington think that will change? The gues i hate to say has a point with his take. Lets throw more good money at a bad idea.
You can always expect the pseudo-intellectual to chime in on everything related to rail. I suppose he doesn’t mind the billions spent on the roads for his big-rig.
For some reason when you look at this it does appear to be a waste of time; it is up to who ever steps forward to purchase the line to develop a business plan to get this line that went dead 16 years ago profitable. The state of Washington should have went out and made it a point to find out if there was an interest and if that interest was enough pay for itself. One would think that there is some information missing here.
If the development of a business plan indicates traffic levels that will sustain a short line operation so be it. If not, it is hard to justify investment. I believe what we are seeing around the country is that there are some branch lines that were given up for dead which now have some very sustainable traffic. It is all about viable and profitable traffic that will move over the line.
Back in the day, the Milwaukee had a fair amount of frozen food business from the Othello area. I wonder if any of those customers are left?
Designed to provide competitive business??? With who?
Mr goose. Build the business…then build the RR? That idea is backwards. Remember Simm City. You need to build the utilities…roads…spur lines…then people can build in ready to run neighborhoods. You dont congregate the people then start planning what to do with them.