Walla Walla Valley

The picture of classic western interurban freight railroading, WWV 600 and a train of Northern Pacific and SP&S boxcars crosses Mill Creek on the south side of Walla Walla on June 6, 1946. The new steel boxcars in the train are indicative of the re-equipping of America's railroads following World War II; otherwise, not much has changed on the WWV in two decades. Dieselization, though, was a little over three years away. Harold A. Hill photo; collection of John Henderson

The WWV was a 14-mile shortline operating between Walla Walla, Washington and the Oregon border town of Milton-Freewater. Owned for much of its life by Northern Pacific (and later, Burlington Northern), WWV was chartered as a streetcar line in 1905, expanding through the fruit orchards of the southern Walla Walla valley the next year as an interurban. Passenger trains stopped running in 1931, but WWV continued as a freight operation, competing with Union Pacific for fruit and vegetable traffic in busy Milton-Freewater.

Electric motors gave way to second-hand Alco diesel switchers in 1950, just as the post-war boom in frozen vegetables and in-transit warehousing began. The WWV was a money-maker for parent Northern Pacific until hard freezes wiped out much of the tree fruit crop and trucks took the canned and frozen goods traffic. It was up to NP successor Burlington Northern to oversee abandonment of much of the railroad in the mid-1980s.

Though not widely photographed compared to other shortline railroads in the Pacific Northwest, a good selection of WWV's corporate records are preserved in Walla Walla area museum and library collections, allowing one to piece together a fairly complete picture of the little-known country interurban.

This website is divided into two sections, one half covering the prototype WWV, the other presenting information useful to modeling this fascinating railroad.

FINALLY UPDATED! After a year of trying, your webmaster finally has updated the site! Check out:

--A first-look at my new, bigger Walla Walla Valley Railway model railroad, under construction

Hopefully, there will be more frequent updates in the future, including car movement information and scans of waybills and other WWV documents, for you operations aficionados. . .

A whole lotta stuff about the history, operations, and equipment of the WWV. We've got maps, photos of the railroad and the industries it served, and a few personal recollections of what the WWV was really like. Pack a lunch, there's a lot in here.

Show me the Prototype WWV!

I have a blast modelling the WWV, circa 1966, so here's a bunch of stuff about my layout, the model locomotive and freight car fleet I use, track plans, timetable and switch lists, and photos galore. If you're thinking of modeling the WWV, or even a shortline railroad, why not look around?

Show me the modeling stuff!