Movin’ Dirt

by Steve Eshom

After a refreshing spring break trip to the beach, its back to railfanning for me.  On Saturday I made another one day trip to the Oregon Trunk to become more familiar with the South Jct. to Redmond segment.  I’ll post on that later this week.  Sunday I set out with the goal of capturing a few images of the Vancouver rail construction projects.  Yep, that’s right, projects.

Right after the first of the year the West Vancouver Freight Access project phase I kicked off.  Aaron and I learned that this first phase will construct a spur off the Fallbridge sub near Eighth St. to serve Albina fuel and the LaFarge cement plant south of the depot.  The second phase will extend the spur west into the port with the goal of all movements to and from the east using this track instead of the hill and grain lead they use now.  The primary goal of the project is to speed up entry and exit into the port which is now slowed by the fact trains have to cross the Seattle sub at Vancouver center. 

West Side Frieght Access Construction

This should be a very interesting project due to watch as there will eventually be a shoo fly built while the trestle near 6th St. is replaced and the fact the first nearly 1000′ of the spur will be on an elevated right of way built on a pre-manufactured concrete wall system. 

The second project is the construction of a storage track or third main track between the north end of the B Yard and 39th St.  In February a switch and some porta potties showed up which is a sure sign that work was about to begin.  In mid-March, during a one day long main 1 window, the switch was installed just north of the Fruit Valley Rd. overpass.  In the last week a minor amount of sub grade work was done just south of the switch.  Other than that progress has been slow. 

A northbound grain train passes the location of the new storage track

Track to nowhere

As has been mentioned on various forums the approach signals for Vancouver Center and Vancouver Jct. North were replaced with a dwarf signal.  I’m sure that is temporary until the new signals are installed at the Fruit Valley crossing location.  When the opportunity presents itself I grab a shot of the stubby little thing.  This storage track is actually part of the Vancouver Rail Project which involves the overpass at 39th St.  

These projects should make the next 3 years fairly interesting around here!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 6:53 pm and is filed under photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.