'Bad wheel' likely put train off tracks outside Palouse

An eight-car train hauling wheat and lumber derailed Friday just north of Palouse and will not be placed back on the tracks until Saturday at the earliest, according to officials with the Washington and Idaho Railway. No one was injured in the derailment, which pushed four cars off the track.

WIR Operations Manager Brandon Stuller said while the cause of the derailment is unclear, the incident itself is relatively minor as derailments go. Stuller said crews will be working through the weekend with hopes of having the track repaired and operational by Saturday or Sunday.

"We're still kind of investigating it; it looks like possibly a bad wheel on a rail car," Stuller said. "It kind of climbed over the rail and caused it to roll the rail."

According to Palouse Grain Growers, the train in question included three cars hauling 200,000 pounds of wheat each, worth about $60,000 altogether, as well as five cars filled with wood from Princeton-based Bennett Lumber.

Palouse Fire Chief Mike Bagott said while the derailment is not dramatic, the difficulty is in the incident's location - on a hillside above the Palouse River.

"You would have a hard time finding a worse spot to derail than right there," Bagott said.

Stuller said the precarious position of the accident causes access problems for those trying to right the cars and mend the ripped-up railway.

"Because of the track and the accessibility, you can't really get a crane in there," Stuller said. "So we're actually bringing in two Cat 345 Ds that will pick up 50,000 pounds apiece."

Kirk Todish, a salesperson with Bennett Lumber, said difficulties along shipping routes can call his organization's reliability into question. Todish said he thinks the derailment was due to lack of maintenance rather than a faulty railcar.

"What our biggest concern is on the whole thing is the negligence of the railroad on how they do not take care of the line," Todish said. "It costs us customers ... that happens a time or two, and they don't want to buy lumber from here because it takes too long to get their material."

He said if all had gone according to plan, the cars would have made their way to Spokane and destinations beyond by now, and they would have received five or six new cars to load with materials.

"At least one day this week we would have gotten (rail cars)," Todish said. "Now, we're backwards a week on those cars, and we are going to be lucky if we see cars next week."

Todish said they've dealt with more dramatic derailments in the past, including an incident about a year-and-a-half ago along that same stretch of rail where he said cars were laid out in nearby farm fields. During that incident, Todish said, the company was forced to ship their materials to a site in Clarkston for export. He said if delays persist into next week, they will likely do that again.

While the railway is subject to a lot of stress, Stuller said the section of rail that the cars were riding on is probably not the problem.

"It's still in compliance," Stuller said. "Eventually, it's going to need to all be replaced at some point, but hopefully long after I leave."

Bagott said it is fortunate that the cars were not loaded with something more hazardous.

"It's just wheat, so I don't know that it would've hurt anything - if they end up having to offload some of that just by dumping it, I mean, it's just going to be kind of an ugly spot," Bagott said. "Fortunately, it's not something that's going to cause environmental damage."

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.