Chehalis Western Railroad HO Scale Models

The Chehalis Western Railroad, operating under the reporting mark CHWR, is a Class III shortline railroad with roots tracing back to 1980, when the Milwaukee Road's dramatic abandonment of its western lines created significant opportunities for other operators to acquire former transcontinental trackage in the Pacific Northwest. Weyerhaeuser, the timber and forest products giant, revived the Chehalis Western name that year to take over Milwaukee Road trackage south of Tacoma, Washington, acquiring routes that included segments connecting Tacoma to Chehalis and a branch running from Frederickson toward Morton. The company purchased four new EMD GP38-2 locomotives to support operations on the newly acquired lines, which primarily served Weyerhaeuser's substantial timber and wood products interests in the region. Operations under the second incarnation of the Chehalis Western centered on the movement of raw logs and forest products northward to the Port of Tacoma. Log reload yards at Curtis and Vail, Washington served as key intermediate points, with trains running Monday through Friday to consolidate loads and bring them to Western Junction before the final movement to Tacoma. In the latter part of the 1980s, the Curtis facility was converted from a log reload yard to a pole yard, where wooden power poles produced at a nearby mill were sorted and transferred to railcars for interchange with the Union Pacific at Chehalis. Weyerhaeuser ultimately shut down operations in July 1992, and in 1995 sold the railroad property to the City of Tacoma for approximately 3.1 million dollars. Following the sale to Tacoma, the city contracted with successive operators, including Tacoma Eastern Railway and later Tacoma Rail, to manage freight service over the former Chehalis Western trackage. The city also made portions of the line available to excursion operators, allowing tourist and scenic rail services to bring new life to segments that had once carried timber traffic. The Morton subdivision, which Weyerhaeuser had acquired from the Milwaukee Road but never fully operated despite investing in bridge reconstruction near Eatonville, was eventually revitalized by the City of Tacoma after years of disrepair. The Chehalis Western's significance in North American railroading lies largely in its role as an example of how timber industry railroads in the Pacific Northwest adapted to, and ultimately were shaped by, the collapse of the Milwaukee Road's western extension. The railroad's history reflects broader patterns of industrial shortline operations in the region, where commodity-specific carriers served major natural resource companies before infrastructure and ownership eventually transitioned to public entities and tourism-oriented operators. The Chehalis Western Trail, a recreational bicycle path running along a portion of the old Vail logging line near Lacey, Washington, represents the final transformation of one corridor from industrial railway to public amenity.