Take Momma on the train

All aboard the Timber Express for the ride to Salvage Logging Central!

That’s the history of Clark County’s only homegrown rail line, which used to pull thousands of board-feet of wood out of eastern and northern Clark County every day. And that was before the massive Yacolt Burn forest fire of 1902 revved the pace of salvage logging in the area up to a frenzy.

But those days are over; what’s now called the Chelatchie Prairie Railroad is a seasonal, nonprofit, weekend tourist line that provides an especially relaxing and scenic outing for moms and dads on their honorary days in May and June.

It’s a 13-mile round trip that passes through farmland and forests, crosses the Lewis River, plunges through a 330-foot rock tunnel and pauses at Moulton Station to visit Yacolt Falls. On Mother’s Day weekend, May 13 and 14, the locomotive in question is a diesel; on Father’s Day weekend, June 17 and 18, it’s a 1929 steam engine.

Both trains feature open-rooftop seating for great views as well as tamer, warming seating inside. On Mother’s Day weekend, all women get a rose.

These family-oriented outings are nothing but relaxing and scenic. Others scheduled for later this year include extra incentives like dinner-and-wine packages via Moulton Falls Winery, premiere seasonal leaf-peeping, and even special adventures like galloping Wild West train robbers and heroic lawmen who battle it out while riders spectate from the comfort of their seats. On Halloween weekend, count on your train being pursued by the Headless Horseman.

Check the bycx.com website for details, but most of the excursions depart at 12 noon and 2:30 p.m. from the train station at 207 N. Railroad Avenue. (Dinner and wine trains depart from Moulton Falls Winery, a little over a mile south of downtown Yacolt, at 31101 N.E. Railroad Ave.) Diesel rides are $16 for adults, $11 for children ages 5-12 and $9 for children 2-4; steam engine rides are $20, $15 and $13.

Historic workhorse

This touristy rail line, which zigzags diagonally across a slice of northern Clark County, used to be a real workhorse. It was a venture launched in the late 1880s by Vancouver businessman L.H. Hidden (the legendary brickmaker) and his cohorts, who wanted to get some local hooks into the agricultural promise of central Washington State: wheat, lumber and minerals.

But the Vancouver, Klickitat and Yakima line, as it was then called, never got anywhere near its ultimate destination, Yakima, where its investors wanted to connect with the Great Northern Railroad and the rest of North America. Instead, it fell victim to economic depression and got sold.

The renamed Portland, Vancouver and Yakima Railroad extended as far as Brush Prairie and got busy hauling plentiful lumber out of the forest — and that was before the Yacolt Burn drove the pace even faster. The fire swept through Southwest Washington (but not, in fact, the town of Yacolt) in September 1902; in October, all-time timber-shipping records were set on the Columbia River.

But by 1929, general manager George S. Long of landowner Weyerhaeuser was writing to stockholders that the land was all used up. The cost to clear stumps and replant was prohibitive. Nothing to see, no money to be made here anymore.

“Yacolt is absolutely dead with no promise for a future life,” Long wrote.

Ouch, that burns. Especially since he was premature. Small-scale logging continued up in the Chelatchie area through the late 1970s. The last working mill closed in 1979 and the train line eventually wound up the property of Clark County, which leases it to the Chelatchie Prairie Railroad Association — an all-volunteer operation entirely motivated by its love of historic trains.

The association is always grateful for new members interested in doing track, car and locomotive maintenance, working in the ticket office or serving as part of the train crew.

If you’ve ever wanted to really mean it when you sing “I’ve been working on the railroad,” this is your chance.