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From an economic drain to a business community gain for Clark County, Wash. That’s the thinking behind the Columbia Basin Railroad Co.’s ongoing revival of a 33-mile line between the Port of Vancouver and Chelatchie, Wash.

Since it obtained a 90-year lease from the county to operate the line in February 2004, Columbia Basin has been upgrading track and developing a customer base. Now, the line that handled 69 rail cars in 2004 is projected to handle about 1,000 cars in 2007 and more than 3,000 cars in 2008.

“The line was in bad shape and had no freight base,” says Eric Temple, president of the Portland Vancouver Junction Railroad (PVJR), which Columbia Basin is forming as a spin off to operate the line. “We took a railroad that everyone wanted out of the ground and grew it. The key is a public-private partnership.”

The Washington State Department of Transportation provided the county $300,000 in the last state budget to help fund track improvements. The current state budget calls for the county to receive $1.1 million to help refurbish the line, which dates back to 1887. The line still has 56- and 76-pound rail, and “old ties in mud,” says Temple.

“In our dream of dreams, we’d like to get the line to Class II [standard], but that would take $20 million,” he says. “We’ve applied for a RRIF loan, but how do you pay it back?”

But track upgrades alone won’t spur business. BNSF Railway Co. has had difficulty maintaining velocity on its mainline to ports in Vancouver, Wash., and Portland, Ore. PVJR can use that situation to its marketing advantage, says Temple.

“Getting shippers off their mainline and onto our railroad is the goal,” he says.

In addition, Clark County officials are trying to rezone 1,400 acres from agricultural to industrial to entice the development of an industrial park, which would be located on PVJR’s line.

“It could mean over 10,000 cars to us in five or six years,” says Temple.

Land development also poses traffic-growth potential for Columbia Basin, which operates an 84-mile line between Connell and Moses Lake, Wash. The Moses Lake area offers large tracts of land and inexpensive utilities, which is helping to attract major facilities, such as those recently built by Microsoft and Yahoo, says Brig Temple, Eric Temple’s brother and president of the Columbia Basin Railroad.

“Moses Lake has thousands of acres with cheap power and water,” he says. “We could go from 8,500 carloads to 10,000 or 12,000 in five years.”