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[quote user="kenneo"] Futuremodel Dave Have you ever looked at going under White Pass to the Eastern end of the T and E.  I remember the subject comming up once, but a tunnell in the manner of Moffett and Stevens should keep the grade low and also let Washington have its John Wayne Trail. I have not checked, but have driven over Hwy 12 and it would seem a long electrified tunnel would work and also provide an entrance into Western Oregon and Washington midway between Portland and Seattle.[/quote] The way I look at it is this:  Which is easier to build - a railroad from scratch, or a trail from scratch? Given that the PCE ROW is mostly intact between Beverly and the outskirts of Seattle, and given that much of this is owned by the State of Washington, in my view it would be much less expensive to secure the necessary railroad ROW between the truncated sections of the ex-Milwaukee and lay down the tracks again (and including the cost of building a new recreation trail elsewhere), than it would be to build a totally new railroad ROW between the Tacoma & Eastern and the eastside via White Pass.  Having a nice railroad grade already in place would cut down the costs dramatically. I do like the notion of skewing an east-west State of Washington ex-PCE railroad further south through the Tri-Cities via the old SP&S ROW from where it intersected the PCE (the SP&S siding at the SP&S/PCE intersection was called MacCall, nothing's there now but the PCE/SP&S grade separation), then utilize the publicly owned Tri-Cities railroad, then the old Department of Defense rail grades back toward the northwest to Vernita, and then use the old Milwaukee Hanford branch grade back to the original PCE west of Beverely at the river crossing there.  Better yet, between Vernita and Boylston would be a good place to construct a new less steep grade up the Saddles to eliminate the need for helpers, and thus have a ruling westbound grade of the whole State-owned line of 1% or so, which would make it operationally feasable to run unit grain trains to Puget Sound without having to access the congested Gorge routes.  Plus, skewing down to the Tri-Cities would allow access to the barge ports for getting grain to the lower Columbia ports aka Portland, Vancouver, Kalama, Longview, et al. Between the Cedar River ROW and the T&E might be difficult to obtain a ROW, since there is so much urban development, and BNSF still owns the branch from Palmer Junction to the T&E connection.  Maybe UP would allow overhead rights from Tukwilla south to Tacoma, but the PCE grade between Maple Valley and Tukwilla is mostly gone now due to development.  I guess the best choice might be to build a new grade from the Cedar River at the foothills of the Cascades south/southwest along the foothills to the T&E.  That's the only undeveloped land left around those parts.
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