Chehalis-Centralia Railroad

The depot of the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum stands on SW Sylvenus Street, a few hundred feet west of Interstate 5 in Chehalis, Lewis County. Inside are a small gift shop, a counter of snacks and drinks, and a few displays of train memorabilia. Outside, a ramp climbs to a passenger loading platform that the Twin Cities Rotary built for free in November 2024. On excursion days the train waits there: coaches from the 1920s, a business car from 1915, and at the head a General Electric diesel known as Engine No. 6. The locomotive the railroad was founded to save, Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade No. 15, stands in the museum’s train shed. It has been out of service since its boiler failed in 2019.

The run west along the Chehalis

Regular excursions run on Saturdays and Sundays from May through October, leaving at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. The 2026 schedule ended on October 3. Boarding begins fifteen minutes before departure, and the railroad’s policy is to leave no later than five minutes past the scheduled time. The train heads west over about ten miles of former Milwaukee Road track. It follows the banks of the Chehalis River through farmland and forest, passing a tree farm, a vista toward Mount Rainier, and a trestle over the river. No one leaves the train during the trip. At the far end the engine does a “run around” and pulls the train back in. One of the railroad’s own pages says instead that it pushes the train home.

The pages also differ on where the far end lies. The regular ride is an 18-mile round trip lasting about two hours. One page names its turnaround as Ruth and another as Milburn, both former rail stops. Another account sends the dinner trains farther, 12 miles out to Ruth, and the shorter seasonal trains run 75 minutes to Milburn and back.

On the way back, the train pauses where the Willapa Hills Trail crosses Spooner Road to let off riders who brought bicycles aboard. From there they can race the train to the depot or ride west along the trail toward Raymond.

Four coaches and a business car

The 601 is a Pullman built in 1926 and first used by Union Pacific. It has tables for four beside large arched windows and a catering kitchen at each end, enough to serve dinner to as many as 100 passengers. The railroad calls it the dining car. It came to Chehalis in 1988, along with the indoor passenger cars and the 801, a passenger coach modified into an open-air car. On pleasant summer days the 801 is coupled to the 602, a coach with wide windows, a built-in bar, and RV-style restrooms. The inside coaches have no heat. Their windows open, a ceiling fan turns overhead, and passengers may move between the indoor and outdoor cars while the train is running. There are no concessions aboard, though riders may bring a box lunch.

The SP&S 99 was built in 1915 as a sleeping car. In 1926 it was converted to a business car for the Spokane, Portland and Seattle railroad, and in 1959 it was upgraded with what were then modern amenities. Its parlor, once a rolling office and lounge for railroad officials, holds upholstered armchairs for six and opens onto a rear observation platform. The car also has a dining room seating eight, two private staterooms, and a kitchen. The railroad obtained and refurbished it in 2017. It is the only climate-controlled car on the train.

Pumpkins, cocoa, and a silver bell

The railroad also runs a calendar of special trains: an Easter train, the Wizard Express, murder mystery trains, Bingo, and themed dinner trains. The 2025 summer brought a Roaring 20s Dinner Train and a 70s-themed dinner run. The Pumpkin Train ran on October 10 and 11, 2026, with departures at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. The cars are decorated for fall, and adults and children alike are encouraged to come in costume. Each child under 12 receives a bag of treats and chooses a pumpkin. A food vendor sets up at the depot before and after the rides.

THE POLAR EXPRESS™ runs on Saturdays and Sundays from November 14 through December 20, 2026, at 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 7 p.m., with added Friday trains on December 4, 11, and 18. Passengers check in at the ticket counter for a golden ticket and line up on the deck to wait for the conductor. The coaches play the film’s soundtrack. Chefs serve hot chocolate and a chocolate peppermint cookie while the Chris Van Allsburg book is read aloud, and hot chocolate dancers work the narrow aisle. The railroad says caribou cross the tracks just before the train reaches the North Pole. There Santa and his elves board, and each child receives the first gift of Christmas, a silver sleigh bell. The chefs lead carols on the ride back to the depot. Most of the actors, dancers, and cocoa servers are volunteers, recruited each autumn. In September 2026 the railroad posted that 700 tickets remained. The Polar Express is its main source of revenue.

Ol’ 15, Big Jack, and a park in Chehalis

No. 15 is a Baldwin 2-8-2 “Mikado,” built in Philadelphia in 1916 and fired originally with oil. It came to Washington in 1928, bought by the Cowlitz, Chehalis and Cascade Railway to haul timber for the state’s lumber industry. Its route ran through Lewis County to local mills and to the interchange with the main line. Between runs it docked at the old Chehalis depot at 3rd Street and Williams Avenue. The City of Chehalis says the engine’s last assignment was pulling log trains for the CC&C, which operated in the area until the mid-1950s. By the railroad’s account, the locomotive then stood on display in Chehalis Recreation Park for 33 years.

Harold Borovec took his first railroad job in the 1940s, at 16, with the Cowlitz, Chehalis & Cascade. In 1986 he and his wife, Alberta, were among the local citizens who formed the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad Association, a non-profit, to restore the old engine. Harold instigated the work. The City of Chehalis released the locomotive to Mineral, Washington, where restoration began in 1987. The work took two years and five months, mostly of volunteer labor, and parts no longer sold anywhere were made by hand. For the engine’s first trip, supporters drove north to Mineral to be among the first to ride the refurbished passenger cars back to Chehalis. Scheduled passenger service began in 1989. In 2006 the association renamed itself the Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum.

Harold ran the train as an engineer for nearly three decades. He received the South Sound Heritage Association’s Heritage Award in 2013 and served on the board until 2019. For a book of a machinist’s recollections, I Was No Nutsplitter!, he and Alberta followed the abandoned G&P tracks through the mountains and plains of Idaho and Wyoming. They were married 67 years. Alberta died on April 22, 2013, and Harold died on June 10, 2023, at 96. The railroad’s memorial page also lists James Andrews, a conductor from 1989 to 2021, and Gladys Hinkle, who ran concessions from 1988 to 2012.

The train shed holds a second steam engine, No. 25, a 1917 Baldwin 2-8-0. In 1920 it carried the number 2501 on its spot plate and the name Big Jack on its side, with “Whitney Co.” flanked by green shamrocks on the slope-back tender. It worked the Whitney Company’s logging lines around Blind Slough, Tillamook, and Garibaldi, Oregon. Around 1927 it was sold to Tideport Logging of Jewell, Oregon, where it became No. 53. It later ran on the Astoria Southern near Olney and the Youngs River before coming to the Cowlitz, Chehalis and Cascade. There it was numbered 25 to fit with the line’s Nos. 15 and 20. When the CC&C disbanded on May 9, 1954, the engine went to the City of Centralia. To move it to Fort Borst Park, crews laid track sections along Old Highway 99, picking up each section once the engine had passed and setting it down again in front. The engine stood in the park from 1956 until 2007, with a cosmetic restoration by the Centralia Eagles in 1969 after vandalism. Centralia gave it to the railroad in July 2007. Its condition is extremely poor. Under the agreement, once it is restored it will carry the Centralia name and, if possible, run excursions between Chehalis and Centralia.

A flood, a lawsuit, and a trade for a Pullman

The trouble began in 2019, when No. 15’s boiler failed. The repairs were estimated at $1 million in specialized work and custom-machined parts. Then came the COVID-19 shutdown, and a flood that washed away about a mile of track. In 2022 a lawsuit cost the railroad its insurance. President Mary Kay Nelson told The Daily Chronicle that Toby Van Altvorst, owner of the Goose Lake Railway in Oregon, phoned unprompted: “He literally called me out of the blue and said, ‘What can I do to help?’ And I said, ‘I don’t have a clue what you can do.’” The railroad ran under Goose Lake’s insurance, and by 2023 the track was repaired and trains were running again. Its own liability coverage resumed in June 2025.

In 2017 the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard had given the railroad an 85-foot turntable. The association had pursued it since 2009, and Bill Thompson arranged the cranes and trucks to bring it to Chehalis. The turntable was never installed, because the rail yard lies in a floodplain. “Building a pit to put a turntable in sounds like a lake,” Nelson said. In August 2026 the railroad traded it to the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie for an early-1950s Pullman coach bearing the number placard 2945. The coach had been built for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and used by Amtrak until the late 1970s. A private buyer meant to turn it into a private car but never finished the work, and at Snoqualmie it served as a stationary birthday coach for children. With no usable track between the two towns, the coach came by truck, 135,200 pounds in all. Cranes set it on its wheels in the Chehalis yard. Richard Anderson, the Snoqualmie museum’s executive director, rode along and handed the key to President Emeritus Bill Deutscher. “This is still the right thing,” Anderson said. The railroad plans to fit the coach with a new generator, heating and cooling, plumbing, and restrooms, and to use it as a dining car.

A 2025 donation from the Larry Shaw Foundation turned the board’s attention back to No. 15. The railroad has contracted with FMW Solutions LLC, an engineering firm that restores steam engines. Nelson said the work would begin in September 2026 and take about three years, an estimated 3,500 hours, carried out in phases as funding allows.