|
Postwar prosperity. . . .and the
inevitable decline
WWV's stylish Alcos were
symbolic of the railroad's busiest years. While agricultural development in
the valley was over, the postwar promised more traffic. Diesels didn’t only
power locomotives on the WWV--their purr was heard in new mechanical
refrigerator cars spotted at new cold storage and frozen food facilities
constructed at Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater (the two towns merged in
1950). And while sub-zero temperatures were great for transporting frozen
vegetables, they spelled disaster for the fruit industry in the valley when
a sudden freeze in November 1955 decimated area orchards. Carloads of prunes
and apples in 1955 fell from 1,181 and 222, respectively, to zero each of
the next three years. It was 1960 before prunes again moved by rail, and
fruit never regained its importance as a commodity on the WWV. Ironically,
1956 was WWV’s busiest year in terms of car loadings. Sawmills located at
Sunnyside and Milton-Freewater, and an increase in sugar beet acreage,
offset the loss of the fruit traffic. WWV originated 2781 cars for
interchange to Northern Pacific in 1947; by 1959 this number had grown to
3550 cars. In 1961, it was estimated that WWV handled 187,000 tons of
freight.
UP and WWV fought for much of
this traffic, as few customers were exclusive to either railroad. Walla
Walla and Milton-Freewater were designated “reciprocal switching districts”
by the ICC for rate-making purposes. Simply put, if WWV originated a carload
of freight in Milton-Freewater and interchanged it to Union Pacific there
for the road haul, WWV received only a flat per-car switching fee (in 1971,
$43.43). If the car left the district, though, and was interchanged to at
Walla Walla, WWV would then stand to be cut in for a portion of the road
haul revenue as well—thus, WWV and NP traffic men did all they could to keep
traffic routed “WWV-Walla Walla-NPRwy.” Union Pacific’s salesmen were a
formidable foe. UP’s share of the loads originating at Rogers Canning
climbed from around 15% in 1943 to nearly 30% in the mid-1950s, a figure
that stayed steady into late 1960s.UP used a contract to supply its
commissary department with canned peas as leverage against one west coast
distributor, who made sure his cars rode the UP out of Milton-Freewater. A
little misinformation worked wonders as well: A buyer in Florida preferred a
UP routing on the mistaken belief that UP’s more southern route was warmer
in the winter months--apparently, the customer was unaware of Wyoming’s
brutal winters!
OPERATIONS ON THE WWV .
.
In the 1960s, WWV’s nearly
two dozen employees were under local supervision by a General Manager. The
office staff comprised freight agents at both Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater,
and two clerks. Another half dozen worked on the track department, although
several doubled as extra board brakemen when necessary. Two engineers, two
firemen, and two brakemen operated the trains. WWV was a daily-except-Sunday
operation. The more-powerful diesels eliminated the need for more than one
crew to operate any time other than the sugar beet season, when a second
crew was called to pull the beet dumps at Baker-Langdon and Zigman. It was
not uncommon for the train returning from Milton-Freewater to shove the rear
of the beet train from Zigman upgrade from the Walla Walla River. On the
‘mainline”, the locomotives always ran long-hood first. The first order of
business upon arrival at the “schoolhouse wye” on the north side of Milton-Freewater
was to turn the locomotive so it would be properly oriented for its
afternoon return trip. After delivering to the NP interchange in Walla Walla
in the afternoon, the locomotive would turn again on the wye, facing south
for the next morning’s trip.
BURLINGTON NORTHERN
TAKES CONTROL. . .
The 1970 Burlington Northern
merger, operationally at least, effected WWV very little. Office functions
moved downtown to the NP depot, and clerical duties migrated to Pasco.
Perhaps the most visible change was at the carbarn, where BN replaced the
770 with a pair of EMD SW1’s of similar vintage. Former Great Northern #77
was first to arrive, in August, 1971, followed by a former Fort Worth &
Denver unit, #104, the following March. The 775 had been retired in 1968.
Not that there was enough
business for two locomotives. Its traffic dwindling, WWV couldn’t overcome
three big obstacles to its survival: the shift of traffic to trucks,
changing markets of its shippers, and track unable to support modern
equipment. Sugar beets had become Walla Walla Valley’s largest single source
of traffic by the late 1940s, and in 1969 constituted fully 45% of its 1470
car loadings--nearly three times that of canned goods. But the shift of food
manufacturers to corn syrup from sugar derived from the sugar beet was
disastrous to companies like Utah & Idaho Sugar, which closed its sugar
mills at Toppenish and Moses Lake in 1978. Motor carriers ate into WWV’s
traffic by the late 1950s, taking the short haul of empty cans from the
Continental plant, then the fruit, the bulk fuel, and eventually even the
canned goods. In the early 1980s, Rogers Walla Walla, formerly Rogers
Canning, changed its marketing strategy from a cannery producing for a
national market to one concentrating on California, moving the business to
trucks.. The wheat and barley traffic from the elevators at Baker-Langdon
suffered after river barges became a lower-cost alternative to growers than
rail when slack water reached up the Columbia River in the early 1960s.
Jumbo covered hoppers introduced in the mid-1960s made the 40’ boxcar
obsolete in grain service, but were too heavy for WWV’s light rail (nearly
90% of the railroad was still laid with its original 56 lb. rail) and
non-existent ballast. Shippers were unable to take advantage of the lower
rates offered for these cars, and most opted to truck their crops to other
elevators, to a barge terminal, or to the nearby Union Pacific elevator at
Spofford..
Only 163 loaded cars were
handled on the WWV in 1982, barely 10% of what was handled a decade before.
Many days, trains didn’t turn a wheel. WWV employees were absorbed into BN
seniority rosters in June 1982 and assignments abolished. Trains would then
be called “as needed,” crews filled off the Pasco extra board. WWV operated
165 trains to Milton-Freewater in 1982, and only 50 the following year. BN
applied to the ICC for permission to abandon the Walla Walla Valley in late
1984, approval of which was granted April 19, 1985. Abandonment followed
five weeks later, on May 26, 1985.
Today, not much remains of
the Walla Walla Valley. In Walla Walla, the carbarn was renovated as a
winery, company documents donated to Whitman College for preservation. Rails
peek through the pavement on Cherry Street and N 6th St. leading
to Snyder-Crecilus Paper, still doing business in the former WWV depot and
headquarters building across from the county courthouse on Main Street. Down
in Milton-Freewater, Rogers Canning, once WWV’s largest customer, is now
owned by Chiquita, and operates seasonally—shipping by truck. The Freewater
substation and freight depot, after operating as the “Night Train” disco in
the late seventies and early eighties, has been tastefully preserved as a
private residence. A few packing sheds and a dirt right of way remain in the
countryside.
Out at the US Borax in Boron,
California, the former #77 survives in shiny
Great Northern green and orange paint, applied when assigned as BN’s shop
switcher at Alliance, Nebraska, prior to the BNSF merger. It led an
interesting life after WWV abandoned, being sold to the Frisco before
returning to BN after the 1982 merger. In a storage shed at the Port Of
Longview, Washington, sits a powder blue HH660, the former WWV 770. Still
operable, it has been purchased by the Northwest Rail Museum at Snoqualmie
Falls, which one day hopes to restore it as Northern Pacific DE 125—Northern
Pacific’s second diesel-electric locomotive. Wouldn’t it be slick, though,
to see it wear Union Blue and grey again, adorned with the “flying” Walla
Walla Valley road name?
|
A new-hire brakeman prepares
to swing on board the 104 as the engine leaves Milton-Freewater without any
return cars during the winter of 1980-81. Winter had always been the slowest
time of the year on the shortline, and as the railroad entered the 1980s, the
season was slower than usual. The railroad was entering its last decade of
operation. Hiroshi Okada photo
SHIFTING TRAFFIC PATTERNS ON THE WALLA
WALLA VALLEY RAILWAY
Using car-movement records from the
1940s, 50s, and 60s, one can trace the seasonal flow of traffic, the
shifting emphasis of traffic segments on the Walla Walla Valley--as well as
watch the railroad's staple traffic sources dwindle and disappear.
Click on the thumbnail for a larger
view.
This graphic compares traffic levels on
the WWV on a monthly basis, for 1948, 1959, and 1960. As you can see.
traffic peaked twice a year, during summer fruit and vegetable harvests,
and again during the sugar beet campaign in the fall. Carloadings in
1959 were up over those a decade earlier, 3550 cars to 2781, mostly due
to a large increase in sugar beet as well as lumber products, which
weren't broken out separately in the 1947 data. One can see how much car
loadings had fallen off by 1969, especially in the summer months, which
previously had been the second-busiest season on WWV in terms of overall
cars moved.
If we
break these yearly totals down by commodity, a picture emerges about the
changing traffic pattern on the railroad. You'll see in 1947 that after
sugar beets, the rest of the traffic pie was pretty equally divided
between fruit, canned goods, grain products (wheat, flour and barley)
and miscellaneous, which is largely outbound shipments of empty cans for
other canneries fairly close to Walla Walla on the NP such as Waitsburg,
Pendleton, and Dayton. You don't see frozen foods, and you don't see
forest products, at least as distinct traffic groups.
Jump ahead to 1959, and beet loadings
still dominate the WWV, but look at fruit! From 17% to less than one
percent in ten years! Fruit virtually disappeared after a big freeze in
1955. But lumber saved the day! Several small lumber mills opened on the
WWV in the mid to late 1950s, and these made up for the loss of fruit.
Grains dipped slightly, as did Canned Goods--probably the result of
Union Pacific taking away more of the Rogers traffic at Milton-Freewater--but
frozen foods contribute a nice slice of car loadings.
Things are getting bleak in 1969. The
wood products pretty much vanished when mills closed in the early 1960s,
and while fruit had rebounded, little still moved by rail-grain products
were going by truck as well to elevators on the Columbia. Beet loadings
were dwindling, but so much other traffic declined that as a percentage,
that their importance grew. Really, only frozen food car loading
increased, thanks to increased use of Storage In Transit waybilling.
How badly was Union Pacific taking away
loads generated on the WWV? While 245 loads of canned goods loaded in
Milton-Freewater were delivered to NP for the road-haul in 1969, another
117 were handed over to the UP and WWV collected only a small switching
charge per car.
Here's 1959's
carloadings as seen month-by-month. Typically, the winter months are the
slowest on the WWV, but you'll see that canned goods move pretty
consistently year round, as does the frozen food. Most of the lumber was
moving out of Nebraska Bridge's saw mill just north of Milton-Freewater,
which operated for only five years, between 1959 and 1964, shipping over
1000 loads during its five years of operation.
Very little
fruit shipped was in 1959, as the orchards were slowly returning. The
big spikes in Miscellaneous loadings in June and July were a big run of
cans for Dayton, Waitsburg and Selah, Washington, from Continental Can.
And, ending the year, you see the impact sugar beets had on the
railroad. During the campaign, typically 30 to 50 cars a day of beets
left the railroad. It'd be fascinating to know if Northern Pacific
operated beet specials out of Walla Walla during this time of the year.
Here's
1969. Pretty sad in terms of carloads. But you'll see consistencies
with 1959 in terms of frozen food and canned goods largely moving
steadily all year long. The winter wheat is harvested and moves in
July and August, the fruit, Prunes and Cherries first, then the
Apples last, move in August, September and October, with a few
straggling carloads into December. The sugar beets again kick in in
mid-autumn and finish up Early December.
|
