CSP, 1st Sub

The day switch crew would usually come on duty at 0700 and switch Potlatch most of the morning. We'd take a break for lunch and return to do any necessary switching in the yard, at Potlatch, and downtown. The night crew would go to work around 1700 and switch the Ports of Lewiston and Wilma, do any needed switching downtown, switch the day's Ayer Turn, spot bad orders on the rip tracks and pull released cars, weigh cars if necessary, and switch Potlatch again. They usually finished by 0300. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

The Ayer Turn crew would come on duty at 0700 Sunday-Friday. They'd double Track 4 to Track 5 in the morning, walk the train, and depart for Ayer Jct. At Ayer, we would separate the BNSF and UP cuts, pick up the inbounds, and head back to Lewiston. We would sometimes switch chemicals and fertilizer for NuChem and Wilbur Ellis at Central Ferry when running West. On the return trip, we occasionally picked up per diem free boxcars stored at Riparia or Crum and arrived at East Lewiston around 1530. We would leave the train on the main for the carmen to inspect and we'd tie down the power by the yard office. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

The Orofino Turn would leave town on Monday morning, pull empty log cars from Forebay, and travel to Orofino. They'd make a Kamiah or Kooskia Turn if necessary. Tuesday, they'd run a Jaype turn. Wednesday, they'd return to Lewiston, spot any outbound commercials on Track 6, pull their inbound commercials from Track 13, switch the log yard at Forebay, and return to Orofino, running a Kamiah Turn if needed. Thursday they'd run to Jaype again, and they'd run to Kamiah or Kooskia on Friday. The train would return to Lewiston on Friday evening, leaving the commercials on Track 6. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

The Grangeville Turn would come on duty at 0800 on Tuesday. We would block the cars on Track 12 to make switching easier up the line, and pull any other cars for the train that were on other yard tracks. The first train I switched myself as the only man on the ground was the Grangeville Turn. After a few bad joints and dumping the air once, my (patient) hoghead and I departed for Grangeville. The Grangeville Turn would return on Thursday evening between 1700 and 2000. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Map courtesy of Jim Morefield

Morrell spur

Morrell Construction used to build steel grain bins and shipped much of their material in by rail, mostly in open top gons. They are no longer in business, but we have built a ramp at the end of the spur to either load or unload equipment on flat cars. The last thing we used this ramp for was to ship National Guard equipment to summer camp in California in 1999. (Jim Morefield)
Morrell construction company occupied the warehouse for several years. They constructed steel grain bins around the area. There is also a pit and auger in the track at the warehouse site which would indicate some kind of fertilizer or dry material at one time was unloaded at the site. Past the warehouse, the track was supposedly set up for bulk fuel unloading. For grounding purposes, the rail still is bonded, but I don't know if there ever was a fuel site there. (Jim Morefield)
Nothing was spotted on the Morrell Spur when I was there. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)
Another frame warehouse with metal siding that hasn't shipped or received for years. (Jim Davis)

Scrap spur

Hasn't been a scrap yard here for ages. (Jim Davis)
Nothing was spotted on the Scrap Track when I was there. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Lux spur

This building was shown as Nezperce-Rochdale Co (owned by Joe Lux at one time) on an old fire insurance map, and I believe it's an old flat house for grain storage (as opposed to an elevator). It's just a simple frame warehouse. I believe that is hasn't shipped for years. (Jim Davis)
Nothing was spotted on the Lux Track when I was there. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Piggyback Ramp

The piggyback track was used in the '80's for just that: unload piggyback trailers and reload them after paper products were placed in them at the mill. Now the ramp at the end of the track is used mostly for handling equipment in to the local Caterpillar dealer. (Jim Morefield)
Jim Morefield told us about the piggyback traffic generated by Potlatch paper shipments in an earlier post. When was this happening - late 70s? or 80s? (Jim Davis)
When I was on the Camas Prairie, we spotted a flatcar on the Piggyback Track at East Lewiston with trucks for a drilling company and another one with a backhoe, but I don't know of any regular customers that receive cars on the team tracks. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)
As I remember, we spotted 4 or 5 89-foot cars at the ramp and would switch them out about once a day. The trailers contained paper products and went out downriver as most of the paper was export to the Pacific Rim countries. The Highball only took out cars going east. My guess is that as soon as the container yard began operation in the Lewiston Port, the TOFC loadings stopped. (Jim Morefield)
When Potlatch loaded trailers heavily, there was one truck dedicated to handling trailers in and out at the piggyback track. We even built another ramp at the end of the Morrell spur in case cars came in facing the wrong direction so we could spot them there instead of having to take them to the turntable to be turned. (Jim Morefield)

B&B Shop

Richfield

Standard Oil owns all the property where the Richfield spur was at, now the Richfield spur is unused, but Standard does still ship by rail and did back in the '80's. (Jim Morefield)
This bulk oil dealer still receives gasoline in tank cars, one at a time - they look like 23500 gal cars to me, but I'm no expert. It's not a Richfield (or Arco) dealer anymore though. It's Coleman Oil, a local distributor as far as I know. (Jim Davis)
Richfield became Coleman Oil. They would receive tank cars, I think placarded for gasoline. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Stockyard

The stockyard was just west of the B&B shop here in East Lewiston. There is still concrete from the holding pens in the parking area just west of the Manager's office. That is the low spot and when we get a lot of rain, the lot turns into a lake. (Jim Morefield)

Car Repair

Another interesting facet of the later time period (late 80s?) is the car repair work that the CSP did. They converted a bunch of bulkhead flats to log cars for BN, and they rebuild some side dump cars for someone as well. (Jim Davis)
The bulkhead flats that we converted to log cars were supposed to be for the CSP, but the BN all of a sudden came up with shippers and liked the way we converted the cars and paid us for the conversions and kept the cars for themselves. As replacements, they sent in 200000 series box cars and we cut the roof and one end out, then mounted bunks on them. In my opinion, they do not make a good log car because they lost structural stability and strength when the roof was removed and we find the side sills cracking on them on occasion. We did completely rebuild about a dozen air dump cars in the same time period and I think it was for BC Rail. (Jim Morefield, 22 Jan 00)

Potlatch Sawmill

Outbound lumber and in the 1970s outbound plywood as well. These shipments would be handled in 50 ft double or combo door boxcars, bulkhead flats or centerbeams. (Jim Davis)
[Re: ...Thrall-all door Potlatch cars by Walthers] I don't remember seeing the Potlatch cars on the CSP, although that's hardly enough to go on. Like Blair, I also saw one at Bovill. The ISP decal set has a "When Empty Return to Potlatch Lewiston ID" stencil. Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s I remember seeing a Green Bay & Western Thrall door car in Lewiston. Interestingly, the old Life-Like version came lettered for the GB&W with a "When Empty Return to Lewiston ID" stencil. I've read that several midwest roads, including the GB&W, had these cars in PNW pool service. (Jim Davis)
Switched every day (Clemens, MR 1998) (Clemens, MR 1998)

Potlatch Paper Mill

Outbound paper products in various 50-ft high cube, 60-ft, and 85-ft boxcars. Inbound plastic granules in 4 bay centerflow covered hoppers, caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) and chlorine in tank cars, and kaolin (Recently this clay product has been shipped as a slurry in tank cars, but in earlier years it was shipped in boxcars. I don't know when the change was made, or if the mill utilized it prior to this decade.) (Jim Davis)
Potlatch would receive caustics, chlorine, hoppers of clay and starch, and boxcars of scrap paper (at the Old Mill Dock). It would ship pulpboard (from the Old Mill Dock), tissue (in 85 ft boxcars), paper (in 50 and 60 ft boxes), and loaded centerbeams. [were the centerbeams from the sawmill or the paper mill?] (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)
Switched twice a day at 1pm and 1am, plus occasional extra switches. Chemicals are switched once a day. (Clemens, MR 1998)
Rail delivery of woodchips in 40-ft boxcars in 1969. In 1998 Potlatch was interested in adding a rotary dumper for chip racks, but never did as far as I know. (Clemens, MR 1998)
When Potlatch first brought the paper mill on line in the early 1950's, the only source of limestone in the area was the Mission Creek quarry. Limestone was and still is a part of the paper making process, was hauled in and run through kilns for some reason. (Jim Morefield)
I will have to check, but I think we still ship a lime slurry in by railcar and I am not sure of the source there either. (Jim Morefield)

Potlatch Tissue Mill

Chemicals switched twice a day for inbound chemicals (Clemens, MR 1998)

Yard

Yard track assignments in 1999:

Main:	Inbound Ayer Turn
Track 1:	Potlatch empties and stored empties (per diem free cars stored for Union Pacific and used for outbound loads, mostly boxes and centerbeams)
Track 2:	Potlatch empties and stored empties (per diem free cars stored for Union Pacific and used for outbound loads, mostly boxes and centerbeams)
Track 3:	Hold loads
Track 4:	Outbound UPs for Ayer Turn
Track 5:	Outbound BNs for Ayer Turn
Track 6:	Clear
Track 7:	City cars
Track 8:	Potlatch loads
Track 9:	Potlatch loads
Track 10:	Potlatch loads
Track 11:	Clear
Track 12:	Grangeville Turn
Track 13:	Orofino Turn
Track 14:	Rip Tracks (mechanical limits)
Track 15:	Rip Tracks (mechanical limits)
Track 16:	Rip Tracks (mechanical limits)
Track 17:	Rip Tracks (mechanical limits)

(Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Yard track lengths:

Double track:	1531'	from the Potlatch main gate crossing to the main lead crossover
Work lead:	844'
B&B lead:	1320'
B&B track:	295'
Lux track:	457'
Standard oil:	680'
Track 1:	4488'
Track 2:	3273'
Track 3:	3273'
Track 4:	3220'
Track 5:	2217'
Track 6:	2640'
Track 7:	1900'
Track 8:	1742'
Track 9:	1531'
Track 10:	1161'
Track 11:	844'
Track 12:	1108'
Track 13:	1056'
Rip 1:	739'
Rip 2:	633'
Rip 3:	528'
Rip 4:	730'
Storeroom:	760'
Inbound:	2376'
Outbound:	2217'
Coal Dock:	450'
Morrell:	565'
Fuel track:	540'
Caboose track:	618'
Propane track:	220'

(Jim Morefield)

Yard Office

We moved out of the depot in 1983 or 1984 to the existing facility. Since there wasn't enough room at the time for all of us, we had the bridge crew take the Grangeville depot apart and haul to Lewiston and assemble it at the present location for the Maintenance office. (Jim Morefield)

Locomotive Facilities

We would tie down extra locomotives on the Stockyard Track for fueling during the weekend, but I think that's a new practice. The old Camas Prairie Railroad Co. tied down its power by the Roundhouse. (Nels Christianson, ca 1999)

Scale Track

The scales are still used for weighing shuttle cars and on shippers request, some inbound loads. The original configuration was a weigh-in-motion system and the west end of the scale track switched back into the main work lead to allow cars to coast to any of the yard tracks. The main track at that time was the track just south of the scales and it connected to the present main track near the yard office. The General Manager we had in the mid 1980's didn't want to pay the rental fees for the weigh-in-motion and he instructed us to remove the mechanism, stub the track off to hold three cars west of the scale, and remove the excess switches. The manager we had in the 1990's stayed with manual weighing, but alowed us to extend the west end of the scale track to connect back to the main so we could at least weigh an entire train without extra switching. The original scale was between the Potlatch switch and the main lead crossover, some of the concrete is still in place. (Jim Morefield, 11-11-00)
I've received two notes off-list confirming that the scale at East Lewiston is still in place and that it's still used (as of 1999 anyway). That will add a considerable amount of work for the yard operator on my HO-scale version - once it gets track on it anyway. I'm starting to get tired of the carpentry phase of layout building... These conversations are nice diversion. (Maybe too good of a diversion...) (Jim Davis, 6-11-00)

FOREBAY

Map courtesy of Jim Morefield

On the Forebay map, the section of double track is label "Double Track" and "Main". That's meant as two names for two tracks, not as "double-track main", right?
Right.. We had to give the track some kind of a name and that seemed to be most appropriate. (Jim Morefield)

Log Unload & Pond

I've seen CSP steam era photos showing flat cars with stakes loaded with logs, and I've seen a photo taken in the early 70s of a UP log train in southern Idaho with logs in standard gondolas. (Jim Davis)
I wasn't involved with the log movements until I began working away from Grangeville in the middle 1960's, but I remember mostly 40' flats being used until the "more modern" log cars were sent in by the NP and UP. (Jim Morefield)
I've discovered that UP had at least one more series of log cars converted from gondolas (in addition to intact gons with log bunks). We've talked about 66800-66949 and 67500-67649 each with 150 in the original series (149 and 144 left in Oct 1980). They also had 664037-664984 (18 cars in Oct 1980) with 7'6" tall log bunks. Anyone know anything about these cars? (Jim Davis)
The old Washington Water Power dam in Lewiston would not be useful when slack water arrived after the completion of Lower Granite Dam, so it was dismantled in either 1973 or 1974. That caused Potlatch to lose the slack water upstream for their log pond. Potlatch diked the area and continued to use a make-shift log pond and unloaded directly from truck and rail to the pond until the sawmill renovation project in the mid 1980's. As a part of that project, the hede crane system in use at the present was placed after the pond was filled. (Jim Morefield)
There wasn't much difference in the log traffic by rail when the log drives stopped because the areas logged for the log drive were too far from a spur or landing, most of those logs from that area began to come to the mill by truck. (Jim Morefield)
I was just looking through a Potlatch Corp flyer that was printed in 1977 that has an aerial photo of the mill. In this photo, the dam is gone and logs are floating in a medium-sized pond just east of the main sawmill building. Most of the logs are stored in decks in a adjacent log yard. The large treatment pond with the giant mixing machines was also in place at that time. I'd guess that the photo was taken in 1975 or 1976 (Jim Davis)

Forebay Yard

Yard track lengths (Forebay):

Track 1: 4435'

Track 2: 4646'

Track 3: 4699'

Track 4: 2006'

Track 5: 2534'

Double track: 2798' from the west end of Forebay to the Potlatch main gate crossing

(Jim Morefield)

NORTH LAPWAI

Clearwater Lumber Co

green lumber mill & log yard (1967 NP ind. list)

Stock facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

SPALDING

ARROW

CHERRYLANE

AGATHA

LENORE

Lewiston Grain Growers

grain elevator (Nels Christianson, 1999) (1967 NP ind. list)

Stock facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

Nezperce Rochdale

seedhouse (Clemens, MR 1998)

BIG GEORGE

ROCK SIDING

PECK

USGS Map, 1967

Lewiston Grain Growers

grain elevator (1967 NP ind. list)

Stock facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

AHSAHKA / RIVERSIDE

Log Loading

Discontinued in 1995 (Nels Christianson, 1999)
Formerly a dam construction spur where cement and fly ash were unloaded. (Jim Morefield)

Ahsahka Lumber Mlg Co.

lumber mill (1967 NP ind. list)

Carney B J Co

Cedar poles (1967 NP ind. list)

Dworshak Dam Construction

(1967 NP ind. list)

Joselyn Pole Co

mid 1960s to late 1970s. (Jim Davis)
The Joselyn pole yard was purchased by B.J. Carney in the mid 1970's. They had 4 spur tracks, two on each side of our main. There were two main track switches opening east and each of these tracks had a parallel spur to where the crane could get along side of a pole flat and load. The Orofino yard limit extended west past the switches to allow switching activities out of Orofino and to allow the crane to pass from one side to the other. One track is still in place on the south side where the fisherman's access is now. The pole yard was shut down about 1984. (Jim Morefield)

OROFINO

Case Lumber

mill? dealer? (Clemens, MR 1998)

Haines Equip. Co

farm machinery (1967 NP ind. list)

Joslyn Mfg

cedar poles (1967 NP ind. list)

Konkolville Lumber Company

Lumber mill. Loads 1-2 centerbeams, several times a week in 1999. (Nels Christianson, 1999) (1967 NP ind. list)

Orofino Builders Supply Co

Building supplies (1967 NP ind. list)

Phillips Oil

Petroleum products (1967 NP ind. list)

Riverside Lumber Co

Lumber mill (1967 NP ind. list)

Shell Oil

Petroleum products (1967 NP ind. list)

Standard Oil of Calif

Petroleum products (1967 NP ind. list)

Texas Oil Co

(1967 NP ind. list)

Wm G Cummings

Equipment and machinery (1967 NP ind. list)

"Fuel Station"

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

Stock Facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

(tunnel)

GREER

Nezperce Rochdale

grain elevator (Nels Christianson, 1999) (1967 NP ind. list)

Stock Facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

(tunnel)

USGS map, 1984

(unidentified spur)

USGS map, 1984

PARDEE

Stock Facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

TRAMWAY

Grain tramway

Grain tramway & storage warehouse, ca 1900 (Reigger, p31)

KAMIAH

USGS Map, 1994

Triple-R Lumber (a.k.a. Three Rivers Mill)

Lumber mill. Occasionally recieves logs from Jaype, recently started shipping logs out on BN log cars built by CSP several years ago to customers on the BNSF (Nels Christianson, 1999) (Clemens, MR 1998)

Clearwater Lumber

Lumber mill [same as Three Rivers?] (Clemens, MR 1998)

Kamiah Mills

Lumber mill. 4-6 centerbeams, 2-3 times a week (Nels Christianson, 1999) (1967 NP ind. list)

Stegner Grain and Seed Co, Twin Feather Div.

Grain (Nels Christianson, 1999) (1967 NP ind. list)

Dinwiddle Pole Co

Cedar poles (1967 NP ind. list)

Joslyn Mfg Co

Cedar poles (1967 NP ind. list)

McFarland L D Pole Co

Cedar poles (1967 NP ind. list)

Potlatch Forests Inc

Lumber mill (1967 NP ind. list)

Stock Facilities

(Marc Entze, 1946 UP inventory)

Scott Paper

Chipper, loaded chip racks to Scott Paper in Longview WA (Jim Davis) (Clemens, MR 1998)

KOOSKIA