Visiting the Inland Empire back in the good old days...as long as you don't count in outdoor plumbing!

No, Hurricane Sandy did not get to Coeur d'Alene last week but quick melting of snow in the mountains can make its own problems for people who live near the lake. The Coeur d'Alene Hotel that currently stands would be behind the larger structure. We now have dams to mitigate this problem most of the time.

I think this is a photo op for the photographer as the guy in the cab is also in there on close up shots as well. This rock can be found just north of the Spokane River on Division St. It is also paved and is 8 lanes wide.  The car is no longer there.

 Here we have a 4 car trolley leaving downtown Spokane heading east. The GN tower is in the background behind the pole. The tracks are all gone and this area is now all buildings, mostly for the educational centers that is a big deal for Spokane.

The trolley is crossing the original Northern Pacific main line through Spokane at the turn of the century ( 1900 ) In 1914 the NP elevated the entire line through town and is now the BN/ BNSF main line through the Northwest. The current Amtrak station is where the passenger cars are located.

Visiting the GN shops in Hillyard 40 years ago.

Here I am in the middle of the repair shops at Hillyard and no one is yelling at me to get out. I guess I was not a terrorist threat back then!  The first time I saw BN green is that engine to the right in the primer green undercoat.

In 1967 GN introduced a new color for their railroad in the form of Big Sky Blue. It was not received well by most of the GN fans. This is the view from the GN control tower base on the west side of the tracks.

During a 1970 NRHS Convention we got to visit the control tower and this mostly Big Sky engines are coming in from Seattle, passing through the yard before heading east again. 

A big deal for the facility was this transfer table that could move engines and cars between different buildings.

This shot was taken from the Francis Ave. overpass with a 300 mm lens back in the good old days.  The control

tower can be seen in the background. The main lines were to the far right of the photo. BN switcher does the work so the yard may have 2 more years to survive when I took this photo in 1972.

The GN herald on the building came down right after the BN merger was announced. Can't have any of that

heritage stuff surviving! The SP&S Railroad used Hillyard exclusively except for the 2 FA's that hung out

at Parkwater yards for the Scribner turn when cars were picked up or dropped off in Marshall Canyon for the NP.

The passenger station to the right was moved to the Spokane Valley and made into an unsuccessful

restaurant and is still there in poor repair. It was hauled by a moving company over Bigalow

Gulch and I have pictures to prove it.

Different eras of power are shown here as the blue unit is from the 50s and the big orange unit is a

passenger unit from the late 60s. The small box to the rear is a clue for the steam generator unit.

Looking north from the Francis Avenue bridge shows how big the yard was and it had a hump in the middle. The crews always had to be aware that cars can roll out either end if not carefully set with brakes. The Western Fruit Express repair shops are on the slight rise to the right of the photos. Sometimes it snows in Spokane.

Looking south on a much better day shows the cattle pens that were there. The tracks that angled off to the left are in the repair tracks. Look how they used to haul wood with banding on groups to hold them in place. Where's OSHA?

In the beginning....there was nothing!

In the beginning there was plywood and plans and imagination of what could we create in this 25 by 60 foot room.

The back half of the room did not look like much near the end of 2008 as we tried to use as much space for a model railroad that we dared to put into this place.

Pete puts in his time doing cork roadbed and track. Future Mount Whitney will be behind him and the Blue Main yard will be near the camera. November 2008.

Terry Frank checks measurements on the front portion of the layout. Those old sofas are long gone!

Merry Christmas from the Spokane Valley Fire Department! On Dec. 26th 2008 We got a phone call saying there was a fire in our club room and when I arrived I saw smoke coming out of the roof. Luckily it was next door that had the problem in some exhaust vent that overheated from the vent being clogged with snow.  That hose will put a tear in our awning!  We all thought it was the end! Not quite!

We survived the fire, the Fire Department, a bad economy, the glass store front, a poorly designed bathroom, keeping funds in the checkbook and kept disagreements to a minimum. Not bad for a bunch of kids no matter what our age shows on our licenses.

Memembering the Milwaukee Road station in Missoula

38 years ago I chased the last of the Milwaukee electrics into Missoula and focused on the train rather than the background. I was with my 9 year old son Jerry Jr and he shot the similar shot from the stairs that led down to the tracks. Yes he had a 35 mm camera as well. The date is June 8, 1974.

This past weekend I traveled back to Missoula with my daughter Bonnie and son-in-law Kent to see the University of Montana play their state rivals.  Before the game started we were walking around downtown and I thought wouldn't it be neat ( do people still say that? ) if I took photos of the old station at or near the same spot I did back in 1974? Well here it is completely restored and still in use but not as a railroad station. The tracks were gone

back in May of 1980 and the railroad was gone except parts of it were absorbed by Midwest railroads.

The backside looks pretty good as well except those darn kids keep getting in my photos! Can you tell which one is my daughter Bonnie? Can you tell which one played linebacker for the U of M and the Jets?

Missoula still has an active train station but not for travelers, Amtrak does not come this way west as they gave up the NP line in favor of the Great Northern line further north. If Mike Applegate is correct I may have had something to do with saving this station when we tried to save the Spokane GN and UP stations

and failed. Mike thinks the noise we made in Spokane had an effect on the BN president at the time and they saved Missoula, Helena, Tacoma, Livingston and others when they realized people still thought they were worth saving. Its a nice thought but I would need to see BN documents to prove it to me.

Missoula has the foresight to save one of NP's 4-6-0's and it looks like it could still pull a few cars around at 60 mph down the line.

We are tearing up the Evergreen layout!

At least part of it that needs to be changed for the track work in the port district. Jim Bowden chisels out the scenery stuff that is the way of the new south end track approach to the port district. Progress must go on!

Burt handles the north end so the track approach is smooth to the port facilities.

Look at this thing. I don't understand it but our resident electrical Guru Allan made this "machine' to control the Blue line where it goes from double track in the front and back of the layout to single track along the east wall. It will not allow a train to enter the circuit if there is a train already in the circuit.  Therefore no head on's in the single track area. Brilliant! I don't understand it but its still brilliant.

These pieces are designed to go near the switch controls for the controlled single track. I still don't understand it as I am from New Jersey!

Taking a ride on the Alaska Railroad.

A visitor stopped by today and asked if he could run his new Alaska RDC on our railroad layout. No one was working on the track work so I asked the guys who were there if it was alright with them. Everyone was good for the idea so we let me run this single unit passenger train.

I think Alaska had 5 of them and it was regrettable that Jim Bowden left early not to see his favorite railroad running on his turf. Our scenery must be close to what the real train riders see when they travel through the real Alaska!

There is even a photographer at the near side of the bridge covering the event as it made its way on the Green branch.

Here we have the 701 stopping at a train station to take on more customers in hopes of seeing bears and moose and other wild life on the ride.

The RDC labors a bit with the grades to reach the top of Mt Whitney. It would not be a good time to derail as the ground is a long way down.

The Alaska RDC passes a silver mine on the top of some God forsaken mountain where men work day and night to pay their taxes for the man. I don't remember the man's name that visited us but we hope he comes back soon.

When Spokane was a railroad town

I was searching the archives and I ran across maps that Hugh Ebright photographed some 3 years ago from a collection of map grids from a relative of his.

Spokane was loaded with tracks when I got here in 1967. In 1907 we had the longest electric railroad in the world owned by a single corporation called the

Spokane and Inland Empire that ran south from Spokane to Colfax and Moscow, Idaho. It the line going to the bottom right of the photo. We had Interurbans, cable cars, trolleys and 5 major railroads. Not bad for a medium sized town in the middle of the Northwest.

I have others showing Hillyard, Parkwater, Fort Wright, NP tower complex, etc. Fascinating!

The Spokane, Coeur d'Alene & Palouse Railroad‏

Back in the day when a Spokane citizen wanted to visit a girlfriend 70 miles away in Moscow, Idaho or Colfax, Washington they could walk there, ride there on a horse and wagon or take the SC&P . To get there you needed  to cross the Rock Creek Trestle, an adventure unto itself.

When leaving Spokane the riders went past this frequency changing station that converted electricity to AC to DC or the other way around. This building still stands as a condo apartments near Liberty Park in East Spokane.

After passing the building there was a 5 mile grade to deal with that went up the north face of the South Hill that you can still see today. Altamont Road has a bike trail bridge crossing it where the railroad bridge was. It proceeded east then started heading south near Glen Aire Road is today. The right of way can be seen on the west side of   Mountain and made its way to the south side as it went downgrade near Big Rock Road and into the Palouse region. Spokane was loaded with railroads, trolley lines, interurbans even cable cars ran up the South Hill. Luckily we gone rid of it all.

 Did I mention that it sometimes snows around here?

Now I am starting to really miss the BN.

Could this be a 50 year old switch engine?  It sure could if you consider the year the engine was originally built in. The 6297 is a control cab for hump yard service down in Pasco. It was built from an old Great Northern SD 9 and they added the switcher cab to control the engine it is attached to. 6297 does not have an engine but the other engine gives power to the traction motors of the switcher. No vibration and plenty of pulling power at low speeds.

1976 was a big year for our country and the railroads. Our 200th anniversary was celebrated by many railroads with many painting one or more units in patriotic colors. See 2 together was a rare theat.

Today we think of the mighty BN as a main line hauler but here we have a old Geeps hauling cars up a steep hills on the Camas Prairie Railroad they got in the merger. Those trestles on the hill are where they are going.

The mid 1980s BN got into the business of leasing 100 LMX locos from GE. They also leased a similar amount from EMD in the form of SD60s lettered for Oakway. I have not seen either one in years.

The wide nosed F45s were a favorite of mine as they seemed to have lots of muscle and character. They are all gone as well. This one just entered the Marshall Canyon heading west.

Big locomotive on tiny tracks

When big is mentioned in model railroading this Union Pacific DD40A Centennial locomotive should be on the top of the diesel list. Back in 1969 I saw my first one at the Golden Spike celebration in Ogden, Utah. It was so new the paint was barely dry. They took 2 GP40 engines and put it in one long carbody with the thinking they just doubled the horsepower of a single loco. So what could be the downside to that thinking?

Lloyd was running this 32 car coal train today (Sunday) and as you can see the difference in length to a normal diesel.  The downside to this thinking was when one engine failed they had 2 engines out of service. They lasted about 20 years before they were retired. There is still one in the UP Historical collection along with the operating UP 8444 Northern and the 3985 Challenger, a smaller version of the Big Boy.

What's up with Canada?

When I think of Canada and the railroads that run up there I think of the Great White North, remember those Canadian comedians on TV.  I think they were comedians.
Here we have an ancient wedge snowplow clearing the main with a GP9 and a caboose to help the crew with long hours and a place to rest



Did you know they had bridges up there? Really big bridges in some places. But what are those foreign locomotives doing in the middle of the power set?


Photo taken near Morant's Curve . Is it possible to take a bad photo up there? Even in inclimate weather?

Once upon a time Canada had a bunch of steam engines and in the cold weather they are even more spectacular!

Years ago, on my way to Calgary you would see a bunch of prairie towers for grain every 20 miles or so. Now most or all of them have been torn down and replaced with something, I don't know. Maybe trucks.