The Palouse & Lewiston branch is one of three sections of what’s collectively known as the Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad. The Palouse & Lewistown branch begins outside of BNSF Railway’s yard at Marshall, just to the west of Spokane, and travels southeast to Pullman, with a section going to the Idaho border. According to the state, the Marshall-to-Moscow-Idaho segment is 87 miles long, with the Palouse-to-the-border section adding another 3.5 miles.
The current operator is the Washington & Idaho Railway, part of MidWest Pacific Rail Net & Logistics, based in Kansas City, Mo. The state says the current operating contract is expiring.
Freight traffic on the line consists mainly of unit grain trains shipping to and from McCoy, Wash. The line also handles carload volumes of lumber, agricultural chemicals, wheat, barley and pulse crops (dry peas and lentils).
Car counts have been growing on the line, from 2,301 in 2014 to 2,951 in 2015, 3,077 in 2016 railcars and 4,958 in 2017. For the first 10 months of 2018 the total was 4,405.
The state transportation department is asking for letters of intent to submit bids by March5, and full proposals by April 5.
The state recently picked a new operator for another branch of the Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad, naming Washington Eastern Railroad, part of The Western Group of affiliated, commonly owned short lines, to succeed Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad on the 108-mile state-owned line between Cheney and Coulee City.
