The Idaho Northern and Pacific Railroad (reporting mark INPR) is a small railroad that runs in Southwest Idaho and Eastern Oregon in the United States. It operates about 210 miles of former Union Pacific branch lines and is currently a subsidiary of the Rio Grande Pacific Company. As of 2006, the INPR operates three separate sections of rail, one running from La Grande, Oregon to Elgin, Oregon, connecting at Elgin with another former UP rail line now owned by Wallowa County which continues to Joseph, Oregon,and the other section is one of the most scenic stretches of Union Pacific route, running from Payette through Emmett and then into the Canyon of the Payette River on a northerly route to Cascade. This line historically continued on to the former logging community McCall.
As of 2006, INPR operates tourist trains and "river and rail" trips in the Payette Canyon that allow riders to ride a train in one direction and return by river raft on the water of the North Fork of the Payette River. Both the Oregon portion and the Payette River line were historically built as logging and lumbering lines with large Boise Cascade mills located in nearby communities, but some of those mills were disbanded and closed in recent times, consistent with a decline in logging and lumber processing in much of the Northwestern United States. As of 2012 The Idaho Northern and Pacific serves the still operating Boise Cascade lumber and plywood mills in Elgin, Oregon, the Boise Cascade particleboard plant in Island City, Oregon, and the Boise Cascade sawmill in La Grande, Oregon.
The Boise line is operated for freight connection with Union Pacific at Nampa and to serve the industrial areas in East Boise with rail service.
Idaho Northern and Pacific's offices are located in Emmett.
Famous quotes containing the words northern, pacific and/or railroad:
“[During the Renaissance] the Italians said, “We are one in the Father: we will go back.” The Northern races said, “We are one in Christ, we will go on.””
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)