The new operation was possible after G&W signed a lease agreement with BNSF Railway to operate the tracks under the Olympia & Belmore banner. G&W railroaders from the nearby Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad began familiarizing themselves along the line over the past weeks and have started serving customers with a single Puget Sound locomotive.
Olympia & Belmore began operations March 16 in place of municipal-owned Tacoma Rail, which stopped serving the Port of Olympia and a nearby industrial park the day before.
Tacoma Rail chose not to renew its lease from BNSF after 11 years, citing revenue losses and low car counts. In August 2014, the railroad paid $430,000 to clean up an extensive diesel spill after a train struck a concrete block left between the rails by vandals.
Commodities to be carried by the Olympia & Belmore Railroad include food products, plastics, and construction materials as well as bulk items for the Port of Olympia.
The route features street running, a several-block long tunnel under Olympia, and a crossing of Capitol Lake at the foot of the Washington state capitol grounds.
More of the Ugly paint schemes railroad trying to take over
The connection is at East Olympia, the Union Pacific’s connection for their Olympia Branch on the BNSF mainline, also used by Union Pacific, southeast about 7.5 miles southeast of Olympia. Since the old Northern Pacific line running northeasterly from Olympia through Lacey to their former connection to the mainline at Saint Clair was pulled out years ago, the operation runs on the former Union Pacific Olympia Branch to Olympia. At Olympia and west for about 5.5 miles to Belmore they run on a portion of the former Northern Pacific branch. It appears to me that in Olympia that there were tracks of both at the Port of Olympia
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Where is the interchange for this new operation handled? I photographed a Tacoma Rail “Oly Turn” a few years ago and they operated on BNSF trackage rights to access the branch G&W is now operating. There didn’t really seem to be any convenient interchange spot at the BNSF junction.
“In August 2014, the railroad paid $430,000 to clean up an extensive diesel spill after a train struck a concrete block left between the rails by vandals.”
With instances like this one would think more effort would be put into stopping all trespassing instead of “cherry picking” the photographers who leave no damage in their wake.