Archive for November, 2005

It’s a great time to live in the Portland/Vancouver area and be a steam fan. With the holidays approaching, both the SP&S 700 and SP 4449 are scheduled for holiday outings.

The SP&S 700 will pull the “Santa Train” from Portland to Vancouver as part of a BNSF Employee/Family Appreciation event on Sunday, December 11th.

The SP 4449 will pull several excursion trains along the Springwater Corridor from OMSI in conjunction with the showing of the movie “Polar Express” at the OMSI OmniMAX theater. Multiple trips will occur on December 9-11 and 16-18.

For more information, see each group’s website linked above.

I didn’t take any photos due to horrible lighting but here’s a quick glimpse of a busy lunch hour in Vancouver.

I started off heading down to 8th street where I saw… Amtrak? Yep… #27 was running a few hours down and just pulling into town. It had AMTK 74 as the sole unit. After it headed south a Q-PTLHAU was getting ready to leave T6, and the dispatcher lined a G-SIMVAW (BNSF 1027, BNSF 5049) across the diamonds and down the hill.

I drove by the shops, passing a couple Dash 9s (BNSF 1121, BNSF 4178) and saw one more train, a southbound UP stack train (mainly K-Line containers) at 39th street with the UP 5374, 9519, and 4466.

I finally got done editing my photos from last weekend, and came up with a few decent ones from some sun breaks on Sunday. What’s this? A day of railfanning around the Seattle Sub and I’m not showing any BNSF pictures? Well yeah… these are better.

Last year Steve and I stayed at the King Oscar motel in Centralia and found it, well, a little below our standards. Imagine the chuckle I got when the UP crew got off their power at Blakeslee Junction and up pulled… you guessed it… the King Oscar motel van:

That UP power was delivering a grain train to the Puget Sound & Pacific, so we chased it west and got a few shot… here’s one as the lead locomotive passes Briarwood, between Rochester and Grand Mound:

And here they are at Gate:

The last photo for now is the southbound Coast Starlight coming around the curve into “downtown” Winlock, with a bit of fall colors showing:

Here’s a few photos from last Saturday, taken on the Seattle Sub before the Foamers Northwest slideshow in Centralia.

The day started out quite wet and foggy, but the red containers of the K-Line stack train show up nicely… shot from the Westside Highway overpass just south of Vader.

Here’s my locomotive catch of the day… a Maine Central GP40 is the second unit on the U-INBROO at Ferrier Road between Vader and Winlock. Gotta love the Guilford G.

The M-EVEABN comes over a small rise at Napavine and picks up speed approaching the control point at Napavine South. Yes, that’s sunshine. We didn’t see much of it.

That’s all for now, folks. Others have posted some pictures over on RailroadForums.