Consider my theory:
This series of photos should be a reminder to be smart while driving and watching trains… your attention needs to be focused on driving.
I have a few chores to take care of at lunchtime this week so there might not be any lunch shots for a few days. Little exciting tasks like taking my truck through emissions testing, renewing the license tabs, and shopping for a birthday present for my wife will need to take priority over trains.
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.
Random coment: Those nice beautiful S-curves really don’t work for steam trains, when the steam is obscuring the whole rest of the train.
Back I am. If I’d known Horizon Air has free beer I might fly on more railfan trips 
Photos to be posted in the next couple days. All in all I’d pre-planned 8 shots. I got 7 of them, replaced one with a substitute a few miles up the road since there was some construction next to the tracks that ruined the shot, and also snuck in one bonus shot from the shoulder of I-84.
The 3985 craze has begun. There’s a bunch of great shots on RailroadForums already and I’m sure more will be posted this weekend. Today is probably the least crazy day to chase, but here I am at the office. Tonight I fly to Boise, rent a car, and drive back to La Grande. Tomorrow I chase back to Boise. Nuts? Yep, but I never claimed to be sane.
http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/excurs/trace.cfm
I think everyone is chasing but me…
Why? Why not.
The northbound herder with MRL on the point comes off the Columbia River Drawbridge…
Conductor, brakeman, and trainee riding down the cannery lead
Today’s lunch brought me two MRL units, and that was just around the wye… I didn’t even head up to the shops. The northbound herder was led by MRL 303, and a westbound manifest at 8th street had an MRL sd40-2 in Operation Lifesaver paint as the second unit.
That’s on top of an earlier eastbound (probably M-PTLPAS) with an MRL unit on the point.
Pictures later, if I get around to uploading.
This week’s Sunday morning experience was visting the UP 3985 on display at Albina Yard in Portland. We packed up the family and headed down there, arriving under gray skies around 10:00. I chuckled at the arrangement whereby you get to the locomotive by going through the gift shop, but I made it out of there only $8 poorer.
It’s an impressive machine, and I bet it’s even more impressive when it’s under steam. I did ask the guy in the UP Steam garb about the Jolly Roger (pirate) flags that adorn the pilot of the locomotive. His response: “Because we can. We’re kind of the rogues of the UP system, we go wherever we want whenever we want and people get out of our way.”
Here’s a few photos:
I headed east with Steve Eshom for a day of railfanning in the Columbia River Gorge. Lineup in hand, things looked to be pretty busy on the BNSF. We had a few shots in mind we wanted to get, so we left Vancouver at 5:30am and started up the Gorge.
Wanting to get to our first photo location at Rowland Lake (east of Bingen) we headed up the Oregon side to Hood River. We didn’t see a single train moving on the UP… didn’t see any stopped, either. We crossed the bridge (75 cents, ka-ching) and headed up the back road above Rowland Lake to find out spot. The sun was just rising and wasn’t yet where we wanted it for the photo. The particular shot we were trying to emulate featured a glassy-smooth lake, but that wasn’t going to happen today with the typical Gorge winds picking up.
The Z-PTLCHC came by before we had very good light. We waited quite a while longer before seeng the next train, Amtrak’s westbound Empire Builder to Portland. Still hoping for a good eastbound shot, we waited another good time before seeing an eastbound garbage load headed to Roosevelt.
We decided to press east and on a whim pulled off just east of the Rest Area before Lyle… we found a well-used trail out to a point above the river which provided some nice views either direction for down-on shots as trains sped through the numerous tunnels in the area. Here we shot a westbound manifest (M-PASINB) coming out of one of the tunnels.
The lighting was great for an eastbound so we waited a bit. Luck was on our side. No, not a train, but a phone call from someone with a crystal ball who told us that there were no eastbounds anywhere between Vancouver and our current location. The westbound situation wasn’t much better (only two trains from here to Pasco) so we thanked him for the update and decided to hop the river (75 cents, ka-ching) back to the Oregon side.
Off to Mosier, and discovering a new photo angle for both of us. We caught two eastbounds, first an MEUHK followed by a KGNAP. I moved about 100 feet between the two photos.
Shortly after the second train, an H-BARVAW passed across the river with a very nice set of power… no Dash 9’s here, just a couple of Dash 2s and a couple of Dash 8s followed by an MRL unit and an ex-SOO leaser.
After a brief wait, radio chatter indicated a westbound which I heard as UP 5353. Excited by the prospect of a hopefully-clean GEVO, we moved down to the bridge over Rock Creek where I had done this exact same shot on my way to GorgeRail last year. That time, the weather was so bad I had to scrap the shot. Today, things were looking great. I hadn’t heard the unit number right, so we got UP 5053 instead. Oh well.
Having had our fill of Mosier we crossed back to Washington (this bridge needs an all-day pass) and back to the rest area to hopefully beat an eastbound we’d heard trip the MP 70 detector. We made it with about a minute to spare. It was a stack train, S-TCPCHC. I’m not sure if stack traffic was just way up, the BNSF is power short, or what, but there were more stack trains in the Gorge than I’ve ever seen.
We started to head west as we’d hoped to do some exploring in the North Bonneville area in late afternoon. The next train we shot (also a stack train) was at Cooks. I’m still not happy with this angle.
As we headed into Stevenson (the stack train was stopping there for a meet) we heard the eastbound call out the signal and had a brief discussion if he said CEFX or CSX… the next radio chatter confirmed it was CEFX 1031, which was enough to make us pull a U-turn to shoot this rare leader on the BNSF. We got him coming around what Steve referred to as “derailment curve” into Home Valley with the X-RGTSWE.
On our way to our super secret photo scouting spot we stopped and shot the M-EVEPAS exiting Tunnel 1.5 in a “suicide shot” off the side of the Hwy. 14 overpass. I blew out the locomotives. You win some, you lose some.
We proceded to our spot, finding the perfect angle and photo composition. After waiting almost an hour and a half, we had to depart, trainless, in order to get back home for the evening. I’ll file the spot for future reference. And that was a day in the Gorge…
Escaping from the office, I went trackside today for just shy of an hour and saw plenty to keep me entertained. I started out at 8th street, where a couple signal maintainers were testing the grade crossing circuit which made for some interesting antics as drivers tried to figure out what was going on. Stopped back at the westbound control signals was a manifest that looked like a Pasco-Lake Yard with a couple of SD40-2s - BNSF 7023/7165.
I headed up to the depot and ate my lunch while an eastbound Tacoma stack train came down and made the turn onto the Fallbridge sub. Another freakin’ stack train… I guess I’ll ask if anyone knows why. Power on the stack train was a green BNSF 8039 followed by two Heritage I FURX units… 7257 and 8124. I waited a while and caught the northbound M-LYDINB come by the depot with the BNSF 616 (patched warbonnet) and the green/black 7011 for power.
I made a loop up to the shops to see what might be sitting around… quite a bit of power was there, I was able to get numbers off the 743, 3008, 3126, 740, 4783, and 5063 (all BNSF). Up at 39th street the H-EVEBAR sat with the BNSF 865, 997, and 535… both of the B40-8W units were in Heritage II paint… that used to be a rarity but it’s becoming more and more common. As much as I like the warbonnet scheme, when it starts to fall apart it looks like crap, and I’ll take fresh Heritage II over peeling warbonnet any day.
Grumpy: “Remember, if it’s worth shooting, it no longer exists.”
A couple weeks ago I got up close and personal with some UP power sitting at the depot.
Yes, it really was glowing this much… I think this was fresh out of CEECO:
Angles:
No real railfanning today… I swung by the shops after work and got to see… get ready for the excitement… one Dash 9!
I knew you’d be thrilled 
No, they weren’t taken at midnight, but I just posted a few new photos to my gallery.
I am without camera today at work since I figured I’d spend my lunch break at the doctor’s office, but apparently Kaiser doesn’t want to deal with me until tomorrow. I decided to go trackside and see what I could find. I figured since I was without camera, that I would probably either a) see a bunch of trains, or b) see trains with unusual power. I got both.
I started off down at the depot, where Amtrak 506 was pulling in right as I arrived… instead of being led by a NPCU, today it had AMTK 158 on the point with AMTK 470 pushing.
Earlier today on RailroadForums, someone commented how garbage trains seem to have a bunch of ex-BN geeps, quite often not yet repainted. What did I find down at 8th street today? A garbage empty with four green ex-BN units (3 geeps, 1 SD40-2).
Back at the center, the ASENP pulled down (my favorite auto train filled with lumber) to reveal an SD70M followed by two standard-cab C40-8s.
I decided to see what might be up at the shops, as I drove north I missed a southbound garbage load with four units that I saw from a distance. At the shops there wasn’t much power sitting around, just a couple of Dash 9s. I went up to 39th street where the H-EVEBAR sat in two parts… this afternoon’s train will have a BNSF H2 Dash 9, UP Dash 9, BNSF H2 Dash 9 on the head end and a pair of H2 Dash 9s for the DPUs.
And back to work I go, pictureless.
Sunday we headed up to Rochester to watch some football with friends, but since I just happened to be driving along a mainline, I just happened to find some trains.
There was a UP stack train just getting on the move southbound at Woodland, and hot on his tail at MP 113 was another UP stack train. The first looked like a KGNsomething, not sure about the second. I took the scenic route through Kalama (read: along the grain elevators and chemical plants) and wasn’t disappointed. I pulled off at Todd Road and as I approached the crossing, the gates started coming down. Aw shucks, another train. The H-EVEBAR9 rolled by with three Dash 9s for power. Right as his tail end cleared the crossing, a S-BPATAC came by with a FURX green weenie followed by a warbonnet GP60M. Excellent, except I’d hoped to shoot that train a quarter mile up the road. I hate it when my photos are spoiled by the abundance of trains What is this, the transcon?
I cruised north through Kalama, watched a couple grain empties jockey for position getting out onto Main 1, and as I drove past Peavey noticed they had a blue switcher (SW-something) out front… with one end up on a crane, having work done underneath. It was nice to see something different… didn’t get any pictures since their location wasn’t very photogenic.
Hopping back onto I-5, I caught a southbound manifest (probably an EVEPAS or TACPAS) pulling out of Longview yard with several geeps… that would be the last train I saw I as I headed north.
Oh, and go check out Northwest Trains… Dan just updated some of the pages.
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Things to come...:
So Long Kodachrome: