Yakima, Washington, population 92,000 (Just a shade larger then Clearwater, Florida or a shade smaller then Gainesville) located in the rugged and remote central part of the state was one of those rare locations where an interurban railway survived. The Yakima Valley Transportation Company known as the 'Apple Country Interurban' continued to operate long after it was sold to Union Pacific. When passenger service was ended, the freight motors kept running.
Built in 1907, from Yakima a line went west to Ahtanum and the area that would eventually be known as Wiley City was completed in 1910, as was the first part of a line to Henrybro. A line north to Selah and Speyers was completed in 1913. The entire operation was sold to the Union Pacific as a wholly owned feeder shortline in 1909. Freight motors pulling strings of ventilated and refrigerator cars loaded with apples mixed with passenger streetcars until February 1947. At that time the railway became freight only and the passenger division switched to 'flexible modern buses.' Those buses only operated for 10 years until they were sold to the City of Yakima. In 1974 the City returned the interurban passenger cars to the route under an agreement with Union Pacific. With a rapidly changing freight demographic, the Union Pacific filed to abandon the railway in April of 1984 and was granted permission in November of 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.
Today the system continues to operate, a hybrid of museum and transit virtually identical to the original concept presented to Jacksonville in 1980 for our own streetcar system. Imagine for a moment what our city would look like had they been leaders and kept the Downtown-Camp Johnston (Todays NAS Jax) route intact all these years. Imagine if General Motors through the Motor Transit Company had left us alone and our politicians had been more interested in our City then their own pockets. Take a ride on the Yakima Valley Transportation Company interurban and it's not had to imagine what might have been - or what 'could be.'
http://www.youtube.com/v/dYCuFHEX8l8?version=3&hl=en_US
YAKIMA VALLEY TRANSPORTATION - THE APPLE COUNTRY INTERURBAN