Yakima Valley Transportation Company - Freight-only Period

Freight-only Period

The YVT railroad, however, continued operating for many more years, as a freight-only operation feeding the Union Pacific main line. In the 1970s, the city reached agreement with YVT/UP to allow a then-proposed heritage streetcar operation to use the tracks and overhead trolley wires of the railroad. This began operation in 1974, with volunteers from a new non-profit organization named Yakima Valley Interurban Lines (replaced in 2001 by Yakima Valley Trolleys), and continues to the present day (as of 2010), on a reduced scale.

Due to declining revenue, Union Pacific filed for abandonment of the YVT on April 26, 1984, and this was approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission on June 5, 1985. Operation ceased on November 18, 1985. However, at the request of city officials, Union Pacific donated the entire railroad to the City of Yakima, to allow continued operation of the heritage streetcar service by the Yakima Valley Trolleys, a 501(c)(3) volunteer-run non-profit organization. The donation included two of the railway's three locomotives, 1909 "Line car" A (for overhead line maintenance) and 1922 GE "steeple-cab" locomotive No. 298. The third YVT electric locomotive, 1923 boxcab-type No. 297, was donated by UP to the Orange Empire Railway Museum, and left Yakima for that museum (on a railroad flatcar) the day after the YVT closed. UP retained ownership of the stone carbarn, on Pine Street, but agreed to lease it to the city for only $100 per year. The YVT was one of the last freight railroads in North America to use trolley poles on its locomotives, never having changed to pantographs.1