September 2005

After a flight to Boise and drive back to LaGrande on Friday night, I chased the 3985 from LaGrande to Boise on Saturday. It was a good trip, with a smooth-running, on-time train and polite chasing crowd. My only beef was the white-sky overcast weather. With the one exception noted below, all of these locations had been pre-selected, which I’ve found usually leads to better results than trying to drive like crazy and pick a spot on the fly. A few of these photos could benefit from some Photoshop pole or line removal, but here they are, as shot without any objects removed…

My first shot of the day was at Hot Lake, as the 3985 splits the signals. I think this was the most blue sky I saw all day.

I doubled back to I-84 via Hot Lake Lane (gravel road but good for 50) and proceeded towards Haines. This shot was where Maxell Lane crosses the tracks a few miles north of “downtown” Haines.

The train had tripped the hotbox detector near North Powder with an “integrity failure” so they stopped at Baker City to check things out. This eased my worry of not being able to make it to my next photo location which was just north of Quartz.

I hopped back onto I-84 and made my way over the Encina summit… I was tempted and I stopped to make this, my one unplanned photo. My car was stopped on the (very narrow) shoulder of I-84 and I hopped over the guardrail to take this photo of the train traversing along the slope just south of Pleasant Valley.

Onto my next planned photo location at one of the S-curves about a mile north of Weatherby. I would have gone further up into the canyon except I reached the limit of where I wanted to take the rental car. And yes, I realize I got line-fucked on this shot. A smarter guy would have realized that before walking up the side of a mountain for the photo.

Heading back to the freeway I weaved my way through the assorted parked Skyllingstand/Miller vehicles and they followed me down to Huntington where I made my way through town and out the Snake River road. I figured it would be a circus out there, but to my surprise we were the first ones there so I picked a good photo location to catch the train coming through the S-curves. Again, steam trains plus S-curves don’t mix, because as you (can’t) see, the steam obscures the train. By the time the train arrived, so had the rest of the foamers.

Off to Idaho… this was a long drive on I-84 to a location just outside Caldwell that had looked good from aerial photos as a possible “across the field” type of shot. Upon arrival I discovered that what used to be an open field was now a construction site, complete with heavy equipment and piles of dirt and gravel. The train was stopping in Ontario to inspect a hotbox, so I went looking for another shot, and decided I liked the look of this lineside silo at Notus.

About ten miles east of Notus is Nampa, where the train was stopping to cut out the diesel helper unit. This let me leapfrog the train to a location alongside a golf course north of Nampa once the train had moved onto the Idaho Northern route into Boise. Of course, with the Skyllingstad/Bundridge Mercedes following me, I used my pre-mapped directions to lead us precisely the middle of nowhere. A little backtracking and trackside intuition helped me find the right place and the shot turned out to have a very nice angle. To quote Dale “Hey this is jointed rail!”. Oh look, transmission lines. Yummy.

Heading back to I-84, again via a poorly-planned scenic route that literally involved making a circle, I drove into downtown Boise and surprisingly found parking right at the (beautiful) depot.

Hmm… one of the UP Steam support vehicles… the train must be getting close.

The train arrives into town…

Depot Tower? What tower?

The fireman and the cab.

And I leave you with this last image of the 3985’s mechanical parts, steaming, cooling down after a good day of running.

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