The Washburn & Northwestern Railroad was a narrow gauge railroad built, owned and operated by the A. A. Bigelow Lumber Company of Washburn except for the last four years of its existence when the Edward Hines Lumber Company owned it. While men were building the mill, others were busy hacking out a railroad into the valuable white pine land the company owned. The road opened in June of 1887 with one mile of completed road. Leaving the mill on 6^th Avenue and heading west, it then crossed the Omaha tracks between 9^th and 10^th avenue west, followed the lower part of town, and then, following the Thompson Creek (Vanderventer) valley, made the top of the hill where it then crossed the Wanabo Road and wound its way in a generally westerly direction away from Washburn. Within a year, the railroad was eight and one half miles long. I believe an early branch followed a line just west of State Highway 13, probably ending just short of Bono Creek. The Battle Ax was to use part of this grade when it was constructed about 10 years later.

Engine facilities, turntable and the like were located close to where the dock met the shore. A machine shop was on the dock itself. In 1892, larger facilities including a four-stall roundhouse and attached machine shop were constructed at a cost of $50,000, the old machine shop being converted into a warehouse. The track continued east past the roundhouse and dock on a large trestle that curved out into the millpond on the northeast side of the mill and was the terminus on the Washburn end. The western terminus was probably in the vicinity of Horseshoe Lake, however branch lines extended to north of Iron River (1894) and another to north of Ino and later under Hines, almost to Port Wing. In addition, around one hundred small branches came off of these main branches leading into the timber. These small branches were used and removed as soon as the land was logged over. During the height of operation under Hines, approximately 60 miles of track were involved. Tim Sasse, who has done extensive research on the Ashland, Siskiwit & Iron River RR reports that " The W&NW had an interchange with the neighboring Ashland, Siskiwit & Iron River RR at Grand Jct. Many cars of logs bound for Washburn mills traversed AS&IR rails for part of their journey. Following the AS&IR’s 1903 abandonment the W&NW took over about 15 miles of their track to reach several tracts of timber west of Siskiwit Lake owned by Hines." Spurs eventually were run into both the Thompson and Sprague mills in Washburn in order for these mills to provide contract sawing for Bigelow.

The Northwestern Lumberman reported on June 25, 1892, that Bigelow put in a telephone line along the entire length of the railroad. A dispatcher located in Washburn ordered all movements by phone to intermediate stations. The Lumberman reported it was the first of its kind and that other logging railroads would probably follow suit.

The American Lumberman of May 13,1899, had this to say about the W&NW:
    "The Bigelow road, which extends westward from Washburn, is the pioneer logging railroad of this section. For a dozen years it has supplied the Bigelow mill with logs, and during those years the Bigelow mill has manufactured more lumber than any other mill on Chequamegon Bay. This road also did hauling for other concerns and will continue to do so, and it is probably the success of the logging operations on this road that has served as a precedent for the establishment of the other roads which have been built in rapid succession."

Under Hines, eleven locomotives and 180 railroad cars brought the logs, 700,000 feet per day, from the woods to Washburn on 60 miles of track. (See Roster) It is estimated that the W&NW Railroad hauled 1 billion feet of logs in its nineteen years of running. After the closing of the mill in 1905, the rail was removed, much of it and the equipment going to the Hines operation in Cusson for use on the White River Railroad.