Columbia and Cowlitz Railway

Columbia and Cowlitz Railway
Reporting mark	CLC
Locale	Washington
Dates of operation	1925–present
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) (standard gauge)
Length	8.5 miles (13.7 km)
Headquarters	Longview, Washington

The Columbia and Cowlitz Railway (reporting mark CLC), is a wholly owned subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser Company, and is headquartered in Longview, Washington; the railroad serves an 8.5 miles (13.7 km)^[1] route from the Weyerhaeuser Company mill in Longview to the junction just outside the city limits of Kelso. From there, traffic is either switched to the Weyerhaeuser Woods Railroad where it is transported to Weyerhaeuser's Green Mountain Sawmill at Toutle or it is switched to the BNSF/Union Pacific joint main line for movement to either Portland, Oregon, or Seattle.

CLC was incorporated on April 9, 1925 and the line was constructed between 1926-1928. The railway is a wholly owned subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser Company. The railway owns a fleet of 500 freight cars including a mix of boxcars, centerbeam lumber cars, and flat cars. A fleet of three EMD GP20 diesel locomotives, which are numbered 700-702, provide road power for the CLC. One caboose, numbered 6, provides tail end coverage of trains because CLC does not employ flashing rear end devices (FREDs).

The railroad employs thirteen people and hauls around 12,000 carloads a year.^[1]

All CLC freight cars are painted a navy blue color with white lettering, although some have worn a mineral red color, and the CLC's locomotives are painted navy blue with white lettering and white pinstripes across the top quarter of the bodies and across the frame sill. However, in times past, some of the locomotives also wore Weyerhaeuser's color scheme of yellow and black. The lone caboose is painted safety yellow with black lettering, Weyerhaeuser colors, and seems to be one of Weyerhaeuser's old cabooses, most likely either #1 or #2. A signature safety feature of CLC's locomotives is the blue strobe light on the roof of the locomotives. CLC chooses blue as their safety light color because of the large number of yellow and red flashing safety lights around the Weyerhaeuser mill in Longview.

On 2 August 2010, Weyerhaeuser announced that along with the rest of the railroads it owns, the CLC was to be sold to Patriot Rail by the end of the year.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Weyerhaeuser to sell southern short lines". Trains Magazine. 2 August 2010. http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=7179&r=rss. Retrieved 2 August 2010.