Railroad Bed &Breakfast: An Old Railroad-Worker Bunkhouse And Two Cabooses Make For A Different Bed-And-Breakfast Experience In South Cle Elum.

SOUTH CLE ELUM - To me, trains come in blurs.

As an East Coast native, I have fond childhood memories of subway cars racing through black tunnels while passengers hang on for dear life.

It is foreign for me to see an unmoving train car, let alone a retired caboose such as the one I've come across here.

The East Coast has its own slower freight and passenger trains. But my idea of a train has always been the subway.

West Coast trains are often slow creatures that lumber across the mountainsides. Even when they rumble by, they seem more subdued than their Eastern cousins.

These trains are working icons of the past, links to what the Pacific Northwest once was. Around the turn of the century, locomotives nicknamed iron horses plowed through the mountains and forests carrying coal, logs and, of course, people. Towns and communities sprouted along with the railroad tracks as the region developed.

One small but lively community was founded in South Cle Elum in 1909. It was a beefy bunkhouse immediately west of the train depot.

For $1,420, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (known as Milwaukee Road) built the house for its men, who toiled on the tracks between Tacoma and South Cle Elum. The town later grew around the crew headquarters.

The 28-room bunkhouse had three rules: no women, no whiskey and no gambling. For decades, the men ate at the depot and slept at the wooden bunkhouse, probably enjoying their fair share of all three no-no's.

Today, the bunkhouse is called the Iron Horse Inn. It is a cozy 10-room bed-and-breakfast establishment decorated with quilts and finished in warm colors. There's even a bridal suite with a jetted tub. Faded timetables, a collection of conductor keys and Milwaukee Road Hiawatha magazines decorate the walls, as do hefty lanterns and wooden bulletin boards. Railroad spikes serve as door stoppers.

"It's a special place with 90 years of history," says Mary Pittis, who purchased the inn last March with her husband, Doug. The couple have a special appreciation for railroad history; Mary's father was a freight agent for Milwaukee Road.

The inn's rooms are named after railroad workers, including conductor Marvin Canary and engineer Emil Schweighart, who often called the bunkhouse home.

The Brady honeymoon suite honors a five-generation railroad family. Guests also can stay in two fire-engine-red cabooses just outside the main bunkhouse. One has the Great Northern insignia, the other is stamped "Milwaukee Road."

I chose to spend the night in the caboose named after conductor Pete Hall. A subway addict like me couldn't resist the temptation of sleeping on a train without having to worry about it screeching to a dead halt in a dark tunnel. Besides, the circa 1950s steel caboose now sports a jetted tub in place of the customary potbellied stove.

Weathered and battered, the caboose's exterior looks like it had been dinged more than a couple of times. But the interior is pure bed-and-breakfast material, and features a comfortable queen-size bed, wallpaper, a refrigerator and a frilly flower wreath. Two ladders lead to the cupola.

Sometimes, all you want to do on a road trip is act like a kid without a care in the world. I leaped on the caboose railings and swung like Mighty Joe Young up and down the cupola, where I spotted the old depot and part of the Iron Horse State Park trail. Hmmm . . . better than the subway.

Unlike Northern Pacific, which Congress granted prime land for its tracks, Milwaukee Road's was the last transcontinental railroad expansion. At the turn of the century, Milwaukee Road had to purchase and lease land for its trains to go West. Its first run, powered by steam, was July 1909. Later, Milwaukee Road's signature passenger train was the electric-powered Olympian Hiawatha, which linked Chicago to Seattle. While the Northern Pacific stopped in Cle Elum, Milwaukee Road based its depot in South Cle Elum.

Milwaukee Road closed its South Cle Elum depot and the bunkhouse in 1974, and filed for bankruptcy three years later. In 1984, Connie and Monty Moore converted the bunkhouse into a bed and breakfast.

The inn sits off the Interstate 90 overpass near the Yakima River, and attracts retired rail workers and their relatives.

They recollect a time when trains moved the country. They reminisce about the old depot restaurant, which locals swear served the best home-cooked meals. Diners, however, had to hold onto their coffee cups when the train shook through town.

When the Mary and Doug Pittis held an open house for the community earlier this year, a retired conductor paid a visit. Later, he shyly told them how he had received a citation 50 years ago after a fire in Othello had injured several people. A number of the Milwaukee Road men commandeered an engine, several cars and a caboose. (The local paper later dubbed it the "Mercy Train.") They cleared the track and then raced the injured to Ellensburg, saving their lives. Mary Pittis plans to frame the citation along with newspaper clippings about the Mercy Train.

Travelers can walk through the inn and find other great stories in mementos as simple as a dining-car menu. Hearty eaters were able to munch on salmon, calf's liver or squab for their morning meal.

Walking through the inn's hallways, it's not hard to imagine the Olympian whistling by, not a blur, but crystal clear.