Trains – October 2019

F

or General Manager Larry

Sorensen, the past 22 years may as

well have been a lifetime. Since the

Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad’s

Sept. 1, 1997, startup, the change

this northwest short line has

undergone is one that might only be seen

during a lifetime, not just within two

decades. What makes it so surprising is

that this growth began near the end of the

long decline of the forest product industry,

which once was the pride of the timber-

rich Northwest.

Puget Sound & Pacific is now a Genesee

& Wyoming property with a 158-mile route

that provides an essential link to the deep-

water port of Grays Harbor at Aberdeen and

Hoquiam, Wash. The railroad still taps the

timber-rich Olympic Peninsula to the mar-

kets in the remainder of the United States

with a water grade route from the Pacific

Coast through the Coast Range hills and

into the interior where they link up with the

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad.

LONG HISTORY FOR A SHORT LINE

The origins of the Northern Pacific

Railway’s line to the Pacific Ocean first

began as a railroad-building war between

itself and a small contingent of people that

sought to have an outlet for bushels of east-

ern Washington wheat. In 1890, Oregon &

Washington Territory Railroad began plan-

ning a link to the ocean to transport the

golden crop of grains from the Palouse

region of eastern Washington. That link

was never materialized in the 1890s, but it

brought out the NP who won the race to

the tidewater and instead tapped into the

region’s vast timber holdings. It would be

over a century before the flow of grain west

to the Pacific would become a reality.

The humble beginnings of the PS&P

started with 18 operating personnel and

inherited a railroad with varying mainte-

nance levels of infrastructure and a mori-

bund traffic base. When the BNSF spun off

this line in 1997, it did so with an annual

carloading of less than 8,000. It was clear

that PS&P’s early success was going to have

to be achieved through aggressive custom-

er service and marketing to keep the exist-

ing customers as well as grow a new traffic

base. “The success of the railroad was solely

in our hands,” Sorensen says. “The mantra

of the original railroad owner, Park Sierra,

was if the employees will provide the

service, we will grow the business”.

PS&P was the third railroad acquisition

for Park Sierra that also owned the Califor-

nia Northern and Arizona & California

railroads. “All of the employees were

bought in on this concept,” he says. “We

were told that this was our railroad to run,

and it was essential for each employee to

make the railroad a success. The relation-

ships with all of our customers was key.”

PS&P was sold to RailAmerica in 2002,

where it remained until the G&W pur-

chased it in 2012. Each of the parent com-

panies continued to emulate the strong

willingness to maintain the customer

relationships and foster new ones.

The PS&P’s route includes the 70-mile

Elma Subdivision from Centralia to

Hoquiam, the 26-mile Shelton Subdivision

from Elma to Shelton, the 48-mile Bangor

Subdivision from Shelton to Bangor Sub

Base, and the 4-mile Bremerton Subdivi-

sion from Bremerton Junction to Bremer-

ton Navy Yard. The U.S. Navy owns the line

north of Shelton for access to the shipyard

and base at Bangor. PS&P operates this line

on the Navy’s behalf. The railroad has yards

at Lakeside near Centralia, Aberdeen, and

at Shelton near Bayshore.

TRAFFIC: IT’S A MIXED BAG

The region, which at one time boasted

too many sawmills to count, is now down to

a few. In 1925, Grays Harbor County alone

supported 112 sawmills turning out 4.8 mil-

lion board feet for every 8-hour shift. The

coming years saw a steady decline in forest

product output, and mill after mill closed.

Today, new state-of-the-art sawmills

have been engineered for maximum effi-

ciency and output, and are feeding a nation

still hungry for lumber. The majority of ex-

port lumber is centered around three large

mills, owned by Sierra Pacific Industries,

along the route. The mills at Centralia,

Aberdeen, and Shelton make up for a total

of nearly 19% of its annual traffic totals.

PS&P has two transload sites for lumber

along the route, including Belco Forest

Products outside of Shelton, and AFAB

(Anything for a Buck) in Hoquiam. In

addition to lumber, the railroad has also

found a diverse traffic base that has reener-

gized a depressed region, infusing it with

much needed jobs and economic vitality.

In 2018, carloadings were nearly 50,000.

PS&P’s marketing strategy had proved it can

be more than a forest-product hauler. The

railroad can attract new and diverse traffic

bases and be proactive with its partners to

think of innovative ways to lure more ship-

pers to rail. This model has been successful

as it has grown carloadings by 42 percent

over the past seven years, with the majority

due to the Port of Grays Harbor.

REACHING THE OCEAN? NO PROBLEM

One of the opportunities that the rail-

road had was the relationship with the Port

of Grays Harbor. “It was underutilized and

undermarketed, and we had the chance to

partner with them to promote the qualities

of the deep-water Pacific port,” Sorensen

says. The Port of Grays Harbor is the only

Pacific port in Washington state that has

direct access to the ocean without lengthy

travel time via the Columbia River or Puget

Sound. Its strategic location on the coast

makes it the closest deep-water port to the

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