CHENEY, Wash. — Author and railroad historian Charles V. Mutschler, 63, has died.
Mutschler, an archivist at Eastern Washington University who had been named interim dean of the university’s library system in 2018, was killed in an auto accident Sunday in Four Lakes, Wash., near Spokane. He had worked at the university for 37 years.
Mutschler was the author of two railroad books: “Spokane’s Street Railways: An Illustrated History,” published in 1987, and “Wired for Success: The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway,” published in 2002. He was chairman of the Cheney Historic Preservation Commission and president of the Cheney Depot Society, founded in 2016 to preserve the city’s 1929 Northern Pacific Railway Depot. He also worked with the Inland Empire Railway Historical Society, which operates the Inland Northwest Rail Museum in Reardan, Wah.
My condolences to his family and friends. I knew Charlie, and he was such a friendly man, a wealth of information. You Sir, will be greatly missed.
This is tragic news! Charlie was part of a large email related railfan group to which I belong and we were just advised of his very untimely death first thing this morning.
Charlie was a prolific rail photographer and almost weekly would send us his most recent shots. My favorites were his black and whites taken during special excursions on the Cumbres & Toltec or Durango & Silverton. Charlie was also digitizing his old slides and would include shots from several decades past in his emails from time to time and these were a remarkable look back at equipment and facilities that no longer exist or have been altered to the point of being unrecognizeable.
My most sincer condolences to Charlie’s family and colleagues at EWU.