NEZPERCE-CRAIGMONT LINE SCRAP-METAL RAILROAD OWED ITS LIFE TO JOE LUX

----Joe Lux of Nezperce has always been a private person, some say. Now, at 83, he certainly presents a reserved demeanor to the world, but it is difficult to tell whether this may be the result of time passing.

Behind that reserved front, though, there is obviously a touch of the theatrical waiting for the right moment to get out.

It may take the form of a flamboyant feather in his hat which he was wearing when interviewed at the Tribune recently.

Or it may manifest itself in one of his many business ventures.

Over the course of his long career, Lux has invested in a variety of businesses, but his most theatrical gesture may have been buying out the Nezperce Railroad Company in the early 1940s and then obtaining locomotives painted a dazzling flame red.

He explains the buying to necessity, and the painting to safety, but who knows?

At 13.6 miles between Nezperce and Craigmont, the company owned the shortest stretch of track of any railroad in the state.

Lux, who was born at Nezperce and now divides his time between Nezperce and Spokane, basically considers himself a farmer.

But he has also invested in several diverse businesses. One of these was Empire Airways, the first Lewiston-based airline, which was set up before World War II but started flying in 1946.

It began with investment by about a dozen people, including Lux.

He is also involved in a steel foundry at Spokane, construction and in grain storage.

He bought the Pomeroy-Starbuck railroad line in the 1980s, but it never really ran and he sold it for scrap a few years later.

Explaining why he bought the Nezperce-Craigmont railroad Lux said, ''We didn't want to lose it. There'd be no way to get the grain out.''

The previous owner, Harry C. Kendall of Portland, Ore., was planning to pull out, Lux said. ''I made him an offer for the price of scrap iron, and I bought it.''

Even though he bought the railroad, which came with an old steam engine and a few flat cars, he could not operate because the track was in such bad condition.

It was so bad that the first spring he bought it there were 13 derailments on one trip from Nezperce to Craigmont.

Until the end of World War II, the grain was transported to Craigmont by truck making 30,000 trips in that period as Lux sank some $300,000 in improving the track.

He also purchased the three diesels, which were repainted at Lewiston, and at one time after World War II the railroad was making at least 300 trips between Nezperce and Craigmont.

He continued operating the railroad to ship grain until the port of Lewiston began operation, which was in 1975. Then he began trucking grain to the port to be shipped out instead of being transported on the railroads.

But although trains did not run anymore on the tracks that were first laid in 1910, the railroad did not die completely.

There was a recession in the railroad business at the time, with hundreds of boxcars sitting unused nationwide, and Lux decided to go into the parking business.

At one time, he said, there was a solid line of boxcars parked on the track between Nezperce and Craigmont 1,150 of them.

But, he said, the county became greedy and assessed the boxcars at more than they were worth for tax purposes and the owners removed them to some other location.

That was the end of the Nezperce Railroad Company. It was conceived by Zephaniah A. Johnson and completed by him in 1910 and it connected Nezperce and Vollmer, which later united with Ilo to form Craigmont.

The tracks were sold for scrap iron in the early 1980s, Lux said. The three flame red locomotives are still owned by Lux because there is no buyer, and stored at Ayer Junction, 20 miles east of Pasco.

One of the two old steam locomotives he inherited from the previous owner is at a museum in the East. It was originally purchased from Northern Pacific Railroad, which bought it back and had it reconditioned at Spokane before putting it out to grass.

The second locomotive went to an amusement park in Wisconsin, and is presumably still chugging around.

Lux's final comment on the railroad?

''I hated to see it go. It had been there as long as I was. You hate to see something go out of the community forever,'' he said.

A rare burst of emotion from a pragmatic businessman.