The Northern Pacific's Granite Lake Tragedy

A number of years ago Mike Applegate, Mike Lustig, Terry Frank and I visited the scene of the worst Northern Pacific

train wreck in their history where the North Coast Limited was going too fast into a 30 mile per hour curve at 70 MPH.

 

3 F unit locomotives left the track without making an impression on the rails and landed into the water of Granite Lake, Idaho about 50 miles east of Spokane, Washington. The year was the early 60s.

 

Burt and Ernie (Keith) take photos from the same spot that the passenger cars are located in the prior picture. Marvin and I stayed on the concrete support that was

the east end of the bridge.

I know the engineer and fireman were killed But I don't remember if any passengers were as well.

 

To the rescue was NP wrecker #45, a staple of the Northern Pacific's equipment based in Parkwater. (Spokane)

 

In the distance is the current NP/BN/BNSF mainline the the NP did and changed the routing to avoid this dangerous curve especially if you don't slow down enough.

 

The prior photo was taken about where the NP diesel is located on the bridge approach. It looked all different today and you could not find it easy if you don't have some historic reference where it is.

 

Editor's Note (i.e. Jerry Jr): These photos reminded me of a recent derailment on the MRL in Montana where three Boeing fuselages fell into the adjacent river:

  

 

 

Northern Pacific Railroad is honored at the Evergreen.

Two options are possible with this photo....we had a flood at the Evergreen or Photo Shop removed the edge of the earth! Marvin's NP Geeps move carefully past the new water level along the edge of Old Town.

 

The age of steam power is near the end as 684, a Spokane engine, crosses a wood bridge that is also reaching its life span, but not on the Evergreen!

 

We rented a helicopter to get this shot of a F unit set passing Mt. Whitney.

 

The high angle shows the layout in a new view.

 

Mike Baker promises to finish the Blue Yard weathering so more phortos can be shot in this area.

 

No NP cabooses are in the yard as they are out there working for a living.

 

Marvin found a low spot in the Red Main and Scotty arrived in time yesterday to fix the problem. I just don't  know how Scotty fit into the little crane to do it?

 

 

 

 

Where the rail lines went west of Spokane.

The big change in Spokane railroads in 1973 was the Latah Bridge that changed everything. Now all the railroads could use one exit  from downtown Spokane using the ex-NP overhead where cars and trains need not co-exist. 

• The old UP track coming off High Bridge  is seen as a remnant to the right of the wye crossing over I-90.
• The SP&S line coming from Fort Wright crosses I-90 and you can still  see a shadow of the line lining up with the north leg of the wye.
• Trains going to/from Seattle use the north leg while most trains going to Portland go west on the south leg.
• The old NP line takes in the east bounds from Pasco/Portland.

Any questions? Did I get it right?

The NP Club

Just by chance the Northern Pacific Railroad was featured at the club today. Marvin Sheppard brought in his new NP GP9s and had them running around like they owned the place. I had my F7s there as well and Marv asked me to run with him.

 

That gave me the idea to make a theme out of it like we've done with the Milwaukee Road and the Great Northern and the SP&S. All of them had sound and we ran pretty good.

 

At one time I hooked up an elderly RS1 just for the fun of it  and an Spokane International train showed up to ruin the scene!

 

Scotty was under the layout today hooking up port switches and maybe a signal crossing as well.

 

Marv's GP9's as so new they still have shiny brass window shades on the locos. We can fix that on Thursday!

 

F units bring back some good memories of train chasing in and around Spokane as we were the bastion of aging F units for the BN.

It's 1965 all over again!

Jerry Quinn
quinntopia@hotmail.com

Well it felt like that with all these first generation locos working the line at the Evergreen!Keith got these 2 new SP&S RS-3s with sound ( sorry no smoke ) and they sounded great!

 

New member Marvin Sheppard acquired a Great Northern U25B with sound and borrowed 2 of my F units to help make the grades. One of them was a dummy but keep that to yourself.

I got into our one spot that you need to climb under the layout to get to this spot and tried this 3/4 wedge shot for this scene. The GE unit is officially 1 week old.

SP&S train is passing a venerable NP caboose on its way to someplace. Our electrical system keeps head ons from happening so the SP&S waits for the green light to enter the tunnel.

 

Something I never saw at Evergreen Railroad before is a Milwaukee Road helper set back in the train as Don Carneigie runs a long Milwaukee train on the Blue Main. In those days you needed to sets of crews but today the engineer in the lead unit runs them all from the front of the train.

Memories of the Northern Pacific

I had a conversation with our new member Calvin and he mentioned that he saw a bunch of steam engines at Parkwater when he was a kid. I said I have a photo of them from Fancher bridge. The year must have been 1958 and all steam is now dead on the Northern Pacific and they are waiting to be hauled off for scrap. The 2 water towers to the left were taken down about 10 years ago still with the NP monad on them.

 

The NP Minnetonka was stored at the Parkwater roundhouse in Spokane for many years before they shipped it off to a Duluth museum. That's my oldest son who is the N scale Guru on buildings that you see photos of his stuff.  Where's the BNSF cops when you need them?

 

 

 

 

The original NP station in Spokane but you won't see it this way. When the tracks were elevated in 1914 it became a one story depot from trackside as this is all fill today where the passenger cars are located. Ah, progress!  It is now an Amtrak station as the old NP is now the route of Amtrak through the Northwest.  The smoke is not Photo shopped!