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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by kenneo Was just over on the BNSF web site on another mission and decided, while there, I would check the NW Division Map for the WIM. Map shows the Saint Maries (STMA) operating Spokane and Saint Maries (not starting at Plummer Jct) and a line South to Bovill (the Elk River Line of the WIM) and the PCC as operating between Bovill and Palouse and then North to Lakeside Jct and also South to Pullman and Moscow. Are the rails still in place? BNSF says the road is in operation. I think not, and if I am correct, it is this sort of thing that spreads information problems. [/quote] Eric, Potlatch bought the St. Maries to Bovill line and the portion of the PCE from Avery west through St Maries to Plummer Junction and the UP connection, called the St Maries River Railroad. The portion from St. Maries to Plummer is run as a common carrier (due to the presence of other rail clients in the St. Maries area), while the portions from Bovill to St. Maries and Avery to St. Maries were run as strictly Potlatch affairs. The Forest Service then sued Potlatch to obtain the PCE ROW from Avery to Marble Creek for a new highway, so that line was eventually torn out. Also, the PCE portion from Avery to either St. Regis MT or Haugen MT was bought by a guy named Edwards who had hoped to use it as a future secondary mainline for either BN or UP, but the Forest Service sued him as well to get the line, which is now part FS road, and part Hiawatha Bike Trail) The UP still runs the branch from Plummer to Spokane, and I was told by someone that UP handles BNSF cars from the SMRR. BN operated the line from Bovill to Palouse until about 1998 when a minor flood took out about 10 feet of track embankment. BN then embargoed the line from the Bennett mill at Princeton to Bovill, although it would have been pretty easy to repair the flood damage (solzrules could have done it in a day with just a wheelbarrow and a shovel!). BN then sold the line to WATCO under the PCC label, and WATCO decided to play SCRAPCO and tore out the rails and ties from Bovill to Harvard (near Princeton). The ROW is still intact, but of course property owners along the way have decided to make their usual claims to the ROW hear and there, although most of it is still accessable by recreationists. The SMRR is currently cut off from the nation's rail grid by that trestle collapse over Benewah Lake. Potlatch is currently trucking product to Plummer for UP reload, and to Spokane for BNSF reload. Last I heard Potlatch was going to repair the trestle, although no sign if such is evident as of last weekend.
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