Road trip

Keith Wiles, Burt Whitney and I decided to go on a road trip to sunny Pasco, Washington this past Friday. On the way we went through Lynd,Washington where the old NP line (BNSF) went under a little known railroad called the Milwaukee Road. This is the remains of the bridge that spanned the valley on the south end of Lynd. BNSF is making lots of effort to double track this line from Spokane and Pasco.

They are having trouble removing the concrete base that goes under the BNSF tracks that connects those two abutments.

 

One one train we saw on the way down south was this one at top of the grade.

 

This is a relatively new model that Union Pacific apparently got rid of and now it is in lease service to the BNSF.  Look how neat the employee put on the owners innitials!

 

I don't know if this is the largest crane in the world but it must be close! Lampson in the Pasco Industrial park is putting together this monster and compare the size of it to a shipping container or a truck.

 

A close up of the hook area further shows the size of this thing. We guessed that it will be shipped out of here on a barge and not a railcar. Water is 500 yards away so it would work...in parts!

 

You aren't going to find this hinge at Home Depot.

Leftovers from Thursday night!

This must be the Midwest, Dorothy!  KCS and Canadian Pacific power sets show up in some Midwestern yard, we even have a Milwaukee Road switcher in the shot!

 

A lone SD40-2 Milwaukee Road engine in on the road doing local service as I never saw a single unit out here in the west on the mainline.

 

The foreground is the port district where we continue to make it more and more complete. I started to rust the rails so when Scotty gets all the wiring done underneath

we can then start the ballasting process. Those KFC, er KCS units move an intermodel down the line.

 

Don keeps adding more Milwaukee Road coal cars to his collection and it it getting very impressive!

 

 

Evergreen Railroad is back in business!

After almost one month of being in construction we now have the layout back for operations. The roof was sagging and they needed to lift the middle up about 5 inches to be sure it did not come down with a heavy snowfall. They needed to protect the layout with wood contruction and plastics tarps to keep the concrete dust off the layout ( and to kkep the beam from crashing the layout. I have been off line for 3 weeks as I had computer problems but I am back now! 

 

This is the front part of the layout where you can see 3 different railroads in one view. The front set of tracks is what we call the Blue main, the second track is where the steam engine is we call the Red Main or our secondary main line. The wood trestle is for the Green Branch and it is for smaller engines as the radius curves are smaller. It's like having a second level but without the overhang issues on double deck  layouts.

 

Mount Whitney was remodeled from a poor job done by me back in the start of the layout some 5 years ago. We revised the track plan from a Wye system to a loop a track that crossed over the trolley line so the trolley line needed a tunnel portal to allow this to happen. I am planning a scenery clinic in the near future to explain how a created the rock formations. Evergreen club is open on Tuesdays from1 pm to 6 pm. We are there on Thursdays from 1 pm to 9 pm with a break for dinner from 5 to 6 pm.