Photos:
Top - Frontier Rail's switch engine ready for assignment at Railex.
Lower center - Switch engine moving rail cars into place at Railex shipping center.

When Paul Didelius was a kid, he was captivated by railroads. After graduating from college, he went to work for a railroad company. In 2006, Didelius welcomed an opportunity to start his own rail company to provide switching services and railcar tracking and maintenance for Railex, the new transcontinental shipping company at the Port of Walla Walla’s Dodd Road Industrial Park at Wallula.   Didelius credits a “great relationship” with the Port for his firm’s success. “They (Port officials) gave us the helpful references we needed to develop a working association with Railex and establish a solid beginning to what we have now expect in the future.”   Frontier Rail has grown from its

single engine to 12 in five states. The company employs more than 30 people - including a dozen at Frontier headquarters in Burbank - in management and operation positions. And according to Didelius there are more jobs to be filled.   “We’re looking for qualified and enthusiastic people who’ll help grow our business. I really don’t see any limit to what we can do,” Didelius emphasized.   He’s quick to credit his wife, Helen, for her contributions to Frontier successes. An engineer, she designed computer software programs specific to company operations...including tools for train scheduling, work crew dispatching and hour reporting records.   Didelius’ mantra for his company is simply stated - find a need and fill it.   In the words of the Watty Piper’s “Little Engine, “If you will just believe its true, then there is nothing you can’t do”

Railex announces
new Florida site

  Railex, operators of produce and wine storage distribution centers in Wallula, is taking steps to add a fourth facility near Jacksonville, Florida.
  The company, which pioneered non-stop, high speed rail service between Walla Walla County and Rotterdam, New York in 2006, added a similar center in Delano, California, in 2011.
  Railex says the $105.7 million Florida project will include a 250,000-square-foot cold-storage warehouse-distribution center on an 18-acre tract.
  The Florida warehouse is being designed and built by Hansen-Rice Inc., an Idaho-based firm that also designed and built the Railex Wine Service Center at Wallula.
  Railex says its newest operation will be completed by the end of 2014.

  Koryn Rolstad’s sculpture “illuminated gateways”, pictured here, will soon welcome visitors to the WW Regional Airport. The original works are part of Washington State’s Art in Public Places program funded by a disbursement of 1/2 of 1% of state construction dollars. These funds were generated by recent construction projects at the Washington State Penitentiary.