TACOMA, Wash — The company which operates Rainer Rail plans to acquire a 4.4-mile segment of Tacoma Rail’s Mountain Division in Washington state.
The track runs from Rainier in Thurston County to McKenna in Pierce County. That segment connects with a 34.6-mile line between Chehalis and Yelm that Rainier Rail bought from the city of Tacoma in 2016.
Dale King, superintendent of Tacoma Rail, said Rainier Rail is paying $100,000 for the line, which has not had any revenue traffic since 2013.
Rainier Rail operator WRL LLC is part of the Frontier Rail group of companies, operated by Paul and Robert Didelius. The company’s website says the existing operation handles commodities including LPG, fertilizer, and animal feed, and offers 6 miles of car-storage track including unit-train capacity.
Frontier’s other operations include the Columbia-Walla Walla Railway, the Yakima Central, the Washington Royal Railway and the Kennewick Terminal Railway, all in Eastern Washington.
Tacoma Rail’s Y-shaped Mountain Division is former Milwaukee Road trackage, later operated by Weyerhaeuser as the Chehalis Western Railroad before being briefly operated by the Tacoma Eastern Railroad. The Mountain Division is owned by the city of Tacoma directly, but Tacoma Rail, a part of Tacoma Public Utilities, began operating it in November 1998. The Mount Rainer Railroad leases a portion of the line on the other branch of the division’s track from Eatonville to Morton for its tourist excursion service.
The bulk of Tacoma Rail’s freight traffic comes from its Tidelands Division, serving the Port of Tacoma.
