As children growing up in Adna during the 1950s, Barbara Back and Sheila Stafford often waited in a wooden shelter along Bunker Creek Road to ride a train into Chehalis.
The cost: a penny a mile.
The two girls boarded the passenger train, paid their seven-cent fare, and settled on faded red velvet cushions for the trip into Chehalis.
“It was my friend Sheila’s mother, Eva Stafford, who first accompanied us on the seven-cent train,” said Barbara (Back) Mason, of Chehalis, recalling the trips with her childhood friend, Sheila (Stafford) Schiminesky, of Centralia. “She did not drive so it was her way to go to town. We would also take the Greyhound, which stopped at Adna’s Scherer grocery store, for 15 cents.”
Mason shared her recollections as we sat aboard the Chehalis-Centralia Steam Train a week ago Monday during a political fundraiser for Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund. The century-old locomotive pulled four cars as it rumbled 9 miles through gorgeous greenery, fertile farmland, and past a plant nursery on its way to Ruth.
After it was unhitched, the No. 15 locomotive, with engineer Harold Borovec in his familiar red cap with white polka dots at the helm, puffed past the train cars to pull them back to the depot near the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis.
Fund, who is a friend of mine, rented the steam train and cars for $1,200. At the Lewis County Gospel Mission fundraiser last spring, Fund bid successfully on a full-meal barbecue for 25 people offered by Centralia City Councilor Lee Coumbs, but for the train trip, she simply asked Coumbs for hamburgers and hot dogs. She provided chips and water, while Coumbs and his fiancée, Centralia Mayor Bonnie Canaday, served the food.
Fund said she considered holding a fundraiser at a local restaurant, but then opted for the steam train.
“I always want activities to celebrate our community,” she said. “We can talk about history, have good food, and then celebrate the wonderful country that we have as we travel through on the train and hear that whistle blow.”
Fund spoke about U.S. presidents who had visited the Twin Cities and held a history trivia quiz in each of the railroad cars, awarding bags of cookies to winners. More than 100 people participated in her Ride the Rails event, which raised $3,500 for her campaign.
“It was wonderful — a beautiful day, beautiful weather, the food was delicious,” said Anthony Ahrens, of Centralia, who rode with his wife, Danielle, and their young daughters. “You only see that part of the county from the highway, so from the train you get a completely different perspective.”
The Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum will celebrate the restored locomotive No. 15’s 100th birthday Sept. 17, said Wanda Thompson, secretary and treasurer.
After Mason shared her recollections, I looked up the history of the Chehalis to South Bend branch line, which the Northern Pacific Railway Co. began building in 1890 and completed a few years later. The line carried freight such as raw logs and finished lumber as well as passengers from Willapa Harbor into Chehalis and back.
Trains stopped at 29 places along the 54-mile route, including Claquato, Adna, Bunker, Ceres, Meskill, Dryad, Doty, Pe Ell, Frances and Lebam in Lewis County. Writer Carl Staeger listed all the stops in an article for The Daily Chronicle’s Washington Territory centennial issue June 6, 1953.
Gradually, as roads improved and people purchased automobiles, the number of trains dwindled. Passenger service ended in 1954, according to a write-up on DiscoverLewisCounty.com. Burlington Northern bought the line and ran freight trains over it until 1990, when it was decommissioned. Later, Washington State Parks began converting the rails into the Willapa Hills trails for pedestrians, bicyclists and equestrians.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
