Re: NNG - Wade Stevenson photos of Milwaukee Road steam

The interesting thing is how little of the Milwaukee in the west is left. Several nights a week, Othello sees a Columbia Basin train but there's not much of the yard left. The company I work for runs the former MILW main west from Othello and then up the branch to the industrial area near Royal City, the line is owned by the Port of Royal Slope. It can go weeks without a train but prior to to that had been closed for several years.

A related company owns the former MILW from Chehalis, WA to near Tenino, mostly for car storage. This was a branch servicing local customers and could use trackage rights to get down to Longview. It was briefly a mainline when the ICC gave MILW access to the SP in Portland as a condition of the BN merger in 1970. After Milwaukee's bankruptcy, Weyerhaueser bought it as they already used it for log trains. After they imploded, the City of Tacoma sat on it for years. The Chehalis steam train group runs on a former branch to the west.

Other than the former Weyerhaueser shop facilities at Western Jct and the gutted substation at Taunton, nothing is left beyond the track itself.