Archive for September, 2005

Well, for the first time since GorgeRail, I have my locomotive database up to date with the sightings I’ve recorded out in the field. I have now seen 6,209 unique locomotives out of a total of 11,556 sightings recorded.

To date, the only locomotive/road complete series I’ve seen is all of the Amtrak F59PHI units. I’m down to three remaining BNSF GP60Bs.

Sunday I (along with Jennifer and Brookly) are heading halfway to Seattle to visit some friends.

I had the brilliant idea tonight… what about Amtrak? Looks like business must be good, as round trip coach tickets for 2 will come to a total of $92. No thanks… I’ll spend far less than that in gas, even in my wife’s gas-hog SUV.

But wait! I have a zillion Amtrak Guest Rewards points… checking the site… Cascades coach tickets are 1,000 points… sweet… checking further… must reserve at least 2 weeks in advance and I can’t buy a seat for Jennifer using my points. Crap.

Oh well, so much for the train.

I got an instant message from Steve right as I got to work saying “I brought my camera today, hint, hint” so I knew I’d have a companion for my lunchtime trackside visit. I headed down there around noon and arrived just moments before he did. As I pulled up I noticed a BNSF Special Agent parked near one of the spur tracks. I thought about going up and asking him for carte blanche permission to trespass but I’m not quite as arrogant as some other foamers I know.

Overall it was a relatively slow hour. MoW was doing maintenance on the Oregon Slough bridge which prevented anything from running north or south for the first 45 minutes we were there. They did run the southbound transfer up to the bridge and I shot him as he crossed over to Main 1:

After the transfer finally pulled south out over the Columbia River, the Frito Lay job came down Main 1 and stopped at the center (caboose leading) to wait to get into the yard. After about 5 minutes he got permission to head onto the yard lead and shortly after Amtrak 506 arrived. Unlike some Amtrak trains, the Cascades trains are often on time and today was one of those days… after completing the station work the train had to wait a couple minutes for an on-time departure.

As Amtrak departed, my departure time arrived as well and it was back to the office to try to get product out the door.

So I was going through some patches and made a comment to Jennifer (my wife) about how BC Rail didn’t exist anymore (at least not as BC Rail).

She asked: “Do you have any Amtrak patches?”
I replied “Yes… two of them… one regular and one K9″
She commented: “Amtrak might go away too”

Just thought it was interesting, given that Amtrak’s future is one topic I know we’ve never really discussed seriously, so that was probably her thoughts just from what she’d seen and heard in the mainstream media.

It was a slower day at lunch today… I headed down to the wye. BNSF 3611 was shoving a cut of hoppers down the cannery lead. A short while later a couple geeps brought the transfer south. I snapped a nicely-composed shot as they curved around from under the old SP&S searchlight signals, but it’s all botched up because I wasn’t smart enough to reset my exposure compensation after taking some photos last night at -2.

I watched the herder bring out three Dash 9s for the evening Z train before driving up to the shops. Another nice set of older power was there including a B40-8, GP60B, and what appeared to be a CP SD40-2 but it was quite a ways back from the road.

No photos today… the only one I shot was the one I forked up.

Yep, that’s right… I’ve had my Canon EOS-300D for almost two years and now have my first visible sensor dust specs (you can see one in the blurred BNSF hopper shot on my last post, about halfway between the BNSF logo and reporting marks). Looks like I’ll get to go do some sensor cleaning research.

Steel wool and some toilet cleaner, right?

Last summer I headed up to Napavine, WA a couple nights after work to watch the rail action. I hadn’t done it yet this year and with the daylight hours getting shorter I decided it was time. Napavine is a small town located at milepost 65 on the BNSF Seattle Sub, about 75 miles north of my hometown of Vancouver.

I got off work around 16:30 and hit the highway. Traffic lessened as I got out of town. At Woodland I overtook a northbound M-LYDINB (Lake Yard/Portland to Interbay, WA manifest) that had an interesting five units for power… a couple Dash 9s, a GP38-2, GP60B, and CN SD75I. I got off the freeway in Kalama to see what was going on at the grain elevators. A loaded BNSF train was parked on the siding waiting to get into its destination, and up near Peavey was a set of power from a UP train… one AC4400CTE and two SD90s… one maroon CEFX unit and one UP unit.

I hopped back on the freeway and got up to Napavine around 17:45. I pulled in next to Robert who had seen two trains in the previous two hours. Fortunately things would pick up soon.

What we saw, possibly not in order:
M-LYDINB
M-TACPAS (featuring MRL 4300 — see below)
X-KAL??? (northbound grain empty apparently going over Stampede)
G-NENINB (northbound grain load that passed while I was getting dinner)
Amtrak #509
Amtrak #508
Amtrak #14 (only about 2 hours late!)
L-NWE676 (northbound local)
IOASE (Oakland to Seattle UP Intermodal) - this was a short one
AGBSE

Gregg showed up with his two boys around 7:45 and stayed for about 45 minutes. It was good to chat with him again and we discussed some plans for next year’s GorgeRail.

I took a few photos… nothing too outstanding. The power highlight for the evening was the MRL 4300 as the third unit on the M-TACPAS. This is the first MRL SD70ACe to come out of CEECO in Tacoma where it was painted. Who knows, this might be the first photo taken of it on the mainline (I know some guys got pictures of it sitting at CEECO). Yeah, it’s a little fuzzy but here it is. It looked really sharp.

Later on I decided to get a bit artsy and screw around with a longer exposure blur shot of a passing grain train at speed… if anyone cares this was done at shutter priority, 1/6 second, ISO 100, exposure compensation -2.

Just before 9:00 I headed south… passed one northbound manifest at MP 113.5 but that was it.

I put a few links over there on the sidebar to some other railfan photographers whose work I like. If you’re interested in a link there, drop me an e-mail or leave me a comment here with the URL to your site. If I like what I see, I’ll add you. I’d appreciate a link back to www.dogcaught.com as well.

I took a quick half-hour lunch today but did manage to head trackside and had a productive time. I started out heading down to the wye (Vancouver, WA) and was able to take the shot below of a Roosevelt-bound garbage train. It’s always nice to catch older power, and un-repainted power, so catching four Cascade Green geeps on one train was nice.

I then took a drive up to the shops, where I found a few SD40-2s sitting there, as well as a TEBC6 hump set. Heading up to 39th street revealed the H-EVEBAR9 backing into the B yard with three H2 C44-9Ws on the point. Not bad for half an hour.

This journal sprung out of a desire of keeping a “railfan diary” of some sort, to contain various trip reports, photos, and other ramblings of a railfan based out of Vancouver, Washington. This site will probably be updated daily; some days more often, some days less often.

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