Potlatch Keeps History On Track Lumber Company’s Tiny Rail Line Uses Ancient Cars To Deliver Logs

On the St. Maries River Railroad, many of the cars are older than the men who work on them.

There’s a 1908 crane car, converted from steam power to diesel. There’s a 1925 water tanker, its red paint bleached to pink by decades of Idaho sun. Many of the log cars date back to the 1940s and ‘50s.

“It’s just a continuous battle,” said mechanic Charlie Reynolds, setting down a blowtorch. “When you’ve got as much old stuff as we’ve got, you’ve got to stay on top of it.”

Still, the railroad seems to be holding its own. Fifteen years ago, the track on which it runs was slated for abandonment, as the Milwaukee Road Railroad retreated from the West. The move would have shut off transportation that loggers and lumber mills have relied on since the turn of the century. Locals feared that Potlatch Corp. would close its St. Maries sawmill.

In 1980, Potlatch bought five locomotives, dozens of cars and 115 miles of track for $4.5 million.

The tiny St. Maries River Railroad was born.

“It’s a unique industry,” said trainmaster Larry Ferger. “Railroads built up the country, and there’s the romance of the rails, and Johnny Cash songs.”

Logs are trucked from the forests to Clarkia, where they’re loaded onto railcars and shipped to St. Maries. Trains leave St. Maries with plywood, studs, lumber, wood chips, pulpwood and garnet sand from the nearby Emerald Creek Garnet mine.

General Manager Gerald Allen said the railroad turns a small profit - $43,000 this year, with an annual budget of $2 million.

In its 15 years, the St. Maries line has received about $6 million in state and federal grants to repair its tracks. On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee set aside $25 million nationwide for next year to continue the so-called “Local Rail Freight Assistance Program.”

There has been a nationwide resurgence of so-called “short line railroads” like St. Maries’ since the 1970s. Massive railroad bankruptcies in the Northeast, coupled with railroad deregulation in the 1980s, spurred local corporations to take over rails threatened by abandonment. There are six short line railroads in Washington and at least three in Idaho.

“Since 1980, we’ve had 307 new railroads form,” said Bill Loftus, president of the American Short Line Railroad Association, in Washington, D.C.

Thus, today there are 12 large railroads and 541 short lines, most of them picking up and delivering freight from the main “trunk lines.” The small railroads serve local mines, quarries, mills, factories, grain elevators and food processors.

It’s not always easy to run short lines, Loftus said. Financing is difficult to get and the track has often been neglected as the larger railroad prepared to abandon it.

On Thursday in St. Maries, a conductor forgot to set the brake on a string of log cars. They rolled along the track, colliding with an empty car. Damage was minor, but Allen was dismayed.

In 15 years, he said, the St. Maries line has suffered only two serious derailments. Each involved several cars and cost about $70,000 to fix, he said.

Despite the railroad’s reliance on the volatile timber industry, Allen predicted the St. Maries line will be around for years. Potlatch’s private holdings can buffer it somewhat from the economic and political winds that shake the logging industry, he said, although he said he’d like to diversify the line’s freight more.

There’s also been talk of forming a tourist train to St.

Maries, said Ferger, the trainmaster.

Despite the regulations and headaches from mishaps like the one Thursday, Allen said he wouldn’t want to work for one of the nation’s mega-railroads.

“We’re small, but we’re home every day,” he said. “Your people are not running all over the countryside.

“The short line business is a pretty nice way to railroad.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo