Background and some information on the line.

I've always had an interest in tracks that parallel roadways. My favorite memory as a kid was watching for trains in the Fraser and Thompson River Canyons during family trips to Alberta. Being partly Canadian, I have a fondness for Canadian railroads as a result. Additionally, a Canadian Pacific branch ran near my Uncle's farm in Alberta. I only saw a couple of trains on it, as grain was moving more and more by truck. Alas.

In Washington, we had three railroads running east-west: GN over Stevens Pass, Milwaukee over Snoqualmie Pass, and Northern Pacific over Stampede Pass.

Unfortunately, Stampede was mothballed when I got my license and the Milwaukee went bankrupt. Also, we didn't have any family that lived to the south east, so we just didn't head towards Yakima on a regular basis.
The Milwaukee was visible in places on the west side of Snoqualmie Pass (and is now a rail-trail across the state).

On those rare occasions when our travel direction and a train were the same, I would implore my dad to slow down or speed up to pace the train. Since he liked trains, I had receptive audience. My brother and mom on the other hand, were more interested in the destination. So a balance had to be struck, a few minutes of train chasing for a slight delay in getting to point B.

Sometimes you get lucky and you don't even know it. We caught a quartet of Milwaukee SD40-2's westbound over I90 at Renslow trestle, outside of Kittitas. Only years later did I learn that the Milwaukee was down to about one train each way per day at that point in its life. If only I'd known...

On a ski trip to Stevens Pass a collection of F45's, SD45's and SD40's soared over the highway. I was ready to turn around and follow them down the hill...my ski buddies didn't share my enthusiasm. "It's just a train, you can chase it anytime." Anyway, you get the picture. If a train is in view, I want to follow it.

So that leads me to the Wenatchee-Oroville branch of the Great Northern, Burlington Northern and finally Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
I first became aware of it on a trip through Wenatchee in the 80's. Or more accurately, I noticed a line that branched off to the north from the Steven's Pass mainline at Olds Junction. (Not that I knew the junction was called that.)

I didn't think much of it, and didn't know about historical societies. I looked through my collection of Trains magazines, but never saw anything. The only photos and information I recall seeing were in Charles Woods book, Lines West. A couple of photos, a shot of an EMD GP pulling a long string of reefers out of Appleyard, that was it.

A few years later, on a ski trip to the Methow Valley, I found myself watching this line out of the corner of my eye all the way up highway 97 until we turned east at Pateros.
Where did it go from there? How much, and what type of traffic was running on it? Was BN using it at all? In years of winter and summer trips, I saw one train on it, and that was a Rail America GP-9 in about 2000 or so.

A few years ago I joined the Operations Special Interest Group  , and the Layout Design Special Interest Group (LDSIG). The two groups function together hand-in-glove, offering advice on designing and building a model layout that will function like a railroad, and detailed information on what the real railroads did and do, and how other model railroaders have created interesting, realistic operating procedures, based on prototype practice, that you can adapt.

For me, it has been a case of not knowing what I don't know. How do you know how to do a railroader's job if you haven't worked on the railroad?

Before I end this post, here's a little bit of information about the W-O. If you want far more detail, I recommend joining the Great Northern Railway Historical Society. In particular, GNRHS reference sheet no. 380, written by John Langlot and Mac McCulloch, is devoted to the Wenatchee-Oroville line. The work these gentlemen have done has been the catalyst for my evaluation of my goals.
An additional resource for historical documents and photographs is the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive.

It was completed in 1914 by the Great Northern Railway, and ran 137.25 miles from Olds Junction to Oroville. At that time, the GN had a connection with the CP and rights to run over Coquihalla Pass, tying into the CP's mainline running into Vancouver, BC. That was all part of Jame Hill's long-running battle with the CP over access to the resources of southern British Columbia.

Traffic on the line was primarily fruit - central Washington is renowned for its apples - and all the towns long the line had packing houses that the GN serviced. Additionally there was also a large lumber mill in Omak, as well as grain loading, bulk oil shipments, farm equipment, TOFC and rock.
All in all, an interesting piece of railroad, with a variety of traffic, in a beautiful section of the country, with the potential to inspire a neat model railroad.

First Post - what this is about.

I'm planning to model the Wenatchee-Oroville railroad line built by  the Great Northern Railway. The project is in its formative stage, with me gathering information, looking for resources and formulating what I want to do with this.
I enjoy railroads, their operations and model railroading, but am balancing that with the normal demands of life and family. The space for the layout is currently occupied with another model railroad, which has turned out to be less than satisfactory to me.

The present occupant is a free-lanced line that proposes to represent the old CMStP&P (Milwaukee Road) line across Washington. I've imagined several alternate realities:

• The SP&S (Spokane, Portland & Seattle) was excluded from the merger (or the merger never took place - version 1.1) that created the BN (Burlington Northern). As the Milwaukee was in dire straits, they sold off the Seaattle-Spokane  portion of the line and the SP&S bought it. Timeline would be 1970-79 or so. Motive power would include Alco C424/425/636's, GP7/9/30/35/38/40, and SD40/45's, plus GE U30/33/36 type power. Potentially.
• MRL (Montana Rail Link)  buys the line, giving them a bridge route across Washington, Idaho and most of Montana. Because the line has good clearances along it, thanks to the electrics the Milwaukee ran, and it ties conveniently into Seattle, it becomes a pressure valve route for BN and UP (Union Pacific) for double-stacks, grain, and other commodities. Timeline would be 1987-2000 or so, and allows for SD40-2's, GE Dash 8 and 9's, lots of modern stuff.

Problems with this mostly centered around my inablilty to focus on any of these to a degree that seemed plausible. The route doesn't have a lot of industry, so switching would be minimal. I didn't plan the towns and industries first. I basically tried to build as long of a mainline as possible into my space. My current feeling is that I've reached a point of diminishing returns.
In any event, progress has come to a halt, and my interests have grown around prototype modeling. I'll discuss this more in another post.