Wishram was a railroad town!

No doubt about it, without the railroad only lonely fishermen would visit this place. But it does have a railroad and it was one of the most interesting in the west. It's the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railroad and it sits on a wide spot along the north bank of the Columbia River in Washington State. It's hillsides are the famous columnar Basalt rock that came from volcanic activity that is hard as a rock. Wait!  It is rock! 

 

It was also famous for the locomotive power that SP&S featured which was Alco locos in all sizes.

 

Here we have an Alco in 2 forms of power with 2 axles per truck and 3 axles per truck, more HP and more traction power to get the train over the line.

A large 6 axle unit called an C-636 ( 6 axles and 3600 horsepower )starts across the Columbia heading for the Inside gateway into Oregon to connect with the Western Pacific at the Keddee Wye in California.

 

Weird stuff on the SP&S

This could be a photo from the wild west where buffalo roamed the plains and the SP&S has a wartime passenger train westbound near Palouse, Washington, but you would be wrong!

Check out the BNSF extra water tender in trail. Year was 2006.  Weird. 

 

 

Why would a large 4-6-6-4 Challenger be pulling a long freight train backwards?  My guess is that it is switching cars around at Marshall to leave some cars for the NP and will take the rest to Pasco or Hillyard, Washington depending on which way he is going. My guess is Hillyard as that is the way he is pointing. I told you they do weird stuff!

 

I can't blame the SP&S for this one as their one and only E-7 has a BN number on it. I think I recall the guys calling it the dip stick paint job as its days are numbered.

 

This one is not weird as it is how a SP&S locomotive should look prim and proper with striping. Same loco 20 years apart.

 

The SP&S #54 got a reverse paint job  as the green is in the middle and has a small yellow band above. The icicles are optional. I could not find a wide shot of it.

 

The #4061 has a BN number at Wishram, Washington along the Columbia River with one Alco behind it has the BN Green already applied to it. But it has the proper paint scheme, anyone at Atlas listening?

Looking back on the Great Northern depot

I came across an old postcard that I purchased when Moses was a teenager and I realized again how commerce was the keystone to the vitality of any city worth its salt. The Spokane River was on both sides of Havermale Island where the depot stood and on the south side they used the channel for power generation with the Washington Water Power/now Avista.  

We tried to save the station in 1971 but failed by a 43/57 voter approval. The city announced they were going to save the tower when the issue was still in doubt. Some in the group called it the "Quinn Tower".  Mike Applegate called it a success a few years ago! What!...... the building got torn down! He replied yes, but you changed the minds of the BN corporate to save Tacoma, Livingston, Missoula, Helena and others when you showed them the buildings still had value even if they did not serve the railroads! I don't know if that is true but I loved hearing it anyway!  Jerry PS. There is no bell in the tower!

The color of Orange

I was lucky enough to be around when the Milwaukee Road Little Joes were still running around Avery, Idaho and Montana. My first visit to Avery introduced me to Boxcabs and Little Joes ( named after Joe Stalin who was supposed to get them in 1948 but the Cold War put a stop to that ) in 1970 and lasted until June 8th, 1974, the last time I saw them run. My HO collection has 3 of them in inventory at the moment, 2 brass and 1 MTH brand.

Don't you just love the headlight glow? Its real.

My paint colors differ a little bit from MTH colors but so did the colors vary on the real ones, depending how much sun the engine got. The GN collection in the background in the Blue main yard reminds me of Hillyard, Washington when I arrived in Spokane in 1967. It was a different world back then.

GN's first diesels got the complete Empire Builder colors along with the yellow pin stripes. Later years (1964? ) they went to a simpler paint minus the stripes. In 1967 they switched to

the evil Big Sky Blue!

I got ambitious enough to put a number of locos in the Blue main yard for this overview of different power units  Someone asked me what my favorite railroad is and my answer ended with 6 railroad names.

The Spokane. Portland & Seattle was the smaller brother of the big guys around Spokane but it still had a warm spot in my heart as it had a lot of Alco power which made it different than the others. I am waiting the the Alco C-636 models promised last year and the wait goes on! In the meantime I will run the smaller C-424s and 425s as you see in this photo.  The RS-1 in the background does not count.

My final trivia message to all you modelers out there is to make your flat cars something special. This one has a commercial load I purchased at Sunset Junction and put on a 50 foot flat car. The deck is weathered, sure but without the chains holding the load in place it just didn't look right. I used CA glue to set the chain to the car and after it dried I took CA gel and went over the connection to better secure it the chain to the car. Regular CA does not have any shear strength except if you get it on your fingers! That switch in the background needs to get attention by the rust crew!

Playing with helpers

I have been not sending much the last week as my computer ate my Picasa program with all my photos on it!  I think I have recovered them but not in the order I like. Anyway here is a collection of stuff that would have never seen the light of day in real life! A Big Boy steam engine with Union Pacific markings on the point is not out of reason.

What is weird is that the train has a Southern Pacific Cab Forward doing the pasting on an SP&S caboose in the company of an NP coal car! Now I could tell you that I was pulling/pushing a 100 car train but then again I don't live in Washington, DC.

I gave these 4 SP&S Alcos some smoke because they are Alcos!

Allan had his good looking CP steamers working on the Green branch during the Open House last week pulling about 22 coal cars. I would guess we had about 180-200 people visit us. The newspaper had a 3 inch column on us and that helped from out the crowd.

Jimmy B. had his 3 Alaska F units doing a freight up the grade. Get those rings fixed before the EPA finds out!