Railfanning 101 or how to avoid the railroad cops. Part 1

It all started out innocent enough as most of the guys joined me for lunch at Frank's Diner in West Spokane. It was an old NP diner turned into a pretty good place to eat. We are on our way to railfan the Marshall Canyon some 5 miles west of Spokane on the old UP/Milw, now bike trail that is between the ex-NP and the ex-SP&S lines.

I asked Don to bring his Moel T with him so we could use it as a prop for photos. Don is pointing to the stop sign but I don't know why he just doesn't use his turn signals?

The seven of us hiked up the old UP/Milw right of way which was the west approach to downtown Spokane. The overpass is the ex-SP&S connection at Scribner that allowed SP&S to use the NP Parkwater yard for freight transfers. That goup dows not have their fearless leader leading them...I guess I have to

lead from behind?

Here's the shot that never was as we wound up on the UP connection at Fish Lake that diverts from the ex-SP&S line that is now the westbound mainline for BNSF through Marshall Canyon. Confused?

I talked the guys into moving from the Fish Lake UP tracks as it was a long shot as the line may have 6 trains a day and we would not see one for a long time. We moved to the Scribner curve and this maintenance piece showed up that digs up ballast and cleans it for good drainage. BNSF has 50 trains a day.

What's the first train that's comes down the track? It's a Union Pacific train with a Canadian Pacific loaner on the point! If we stayed put we would have gotten the Model T shot. Why do they listen to me?

NP rules on Tuesdays!

When I came into the club on Tuesday Marvelous Marvin had his Northern Pacific trains running the rails. So I set up for a meet at Coyote Gulch ( I think that what Mike Applegate called it? ) to catch all 3 NP trains in one shot.

The 3605 is on the Blue main and the other is on the Red Main so we could have the guys run their trains without worrying about running into each other. The little red flags are for the sensors so 3605 can enter the 1 track tunnel system on the eats wall and not have another train coming at him as it would be in the mountain and tunnel areas that we can't see. Only one train at a time can be in that block.

 

Marvin also had our club power pulling our track cleaning cars which consist of a vacuum car and the liquid car to clean the rails with track cleaning solutions and an abrasive pad. The lead engine also has sound so you always know where it is!

Two trains pass the lumber mill in the front section of the layout.

Going to the club I saw this 1929 Chevrolet putting down Sullivan Road and it pulled into a gas station so I doubled back to take a photo. The old gentleman was pleased that I stopped to do this and I was too.

What do you call this? A 4 door sedan that's a semi-convertible. There must be an official name for it?

Remember the BN Railroad...the friendly line!

Oh how I miss the BN green on F units and Geeps. here we have a collection of them heading the wrong way on the flow of traffic that I see going the other way on eastbounds. Latah bridge is just to the left. I-90 is in the background and lovely Spokane as well. 

Last week someone complained about the railroads on the front page of the Review. Like they go too fast at 79 MPH through Spokane plus other gripes. It was full of mis-statements and lies. Here is a sign at Yardley back in the day that limits passenger and freight trains. On top of that downtown Spokane has a 25 MPH rule plus the (2) passenger trains (Amtrak) has to stop at the station so they start at 0 to go either way.  The foreign power were passing through BN territory.

 

 Remember the personalized trailers that BN put on the rails? I don't know if Spokane was one of them but there were many cities featured. They are all gone including the BN AMERICA containers.

As the non-official BN photographer of the day here I am shooting 2 F45s in 2 color schemes including the latest being in BN colors. No one said boo to me as I certainly was not a worker in my office clothes.

And the winner of the ugly BN caboose scheme is........? This one of kind color scheme was at Whitefish yard scaring all the moose and bears away.

 Remember the first AC power units on the BN? Now they are as common as thieves in Chicago, IL. My son rode these units to Pasco when he was a brakeman and I caught them on the way back east passing Erie St. yard in downtown Spokane.

It's Thursday in sunny Washington State

Tommy Frank had 2 of his BNSF Dash 8 units on the point and 1 on the tail pushing. Just like the big guys.

The train passes our one and only ice station Titanic!  They should name a ship with that name!

Marvin had his NP units getting ready to roll after a wonderful vacation in Montana

More units were added for the main line freight.

Remember Keith Wiles? He was the BNSF engineer I talked about at Yardley. Keith has 13 of these Alco FA models that he asked me to help him fix them up. We removed the factory lettering and added the correct lettering in decals. We will add handrails, windshield wipers, correct horns and a little weathering.  I asked Keith to keep them to 6 models at a time so it could be managed. Yikes!

Orange is the color of the day!

Don Carnegie put this odd collection together today and I asked him what the caboose was for. It was a test run of his equipment so no real answer was needed.

Tommy Frank had 2 of his 3 BNSF GEs pulling a long freight train as the one needed an oil change.

 

Don's power was an E7 in the original paint scheme with the maroon stripe with the President of the railroad trying to figure out how to save the company. Maybe the Vice Pres. is in the caboose?

Keeping with the orange theme I ran into this set up on Railroad Avenue just south of the Yardley yard in Spokane. The unit is an ex-GP30 now a GP39 in the current paint scheme. The rear unit belongs to some obscure railroad that was eaten by the Santa Fe. The sign below the engine number says that it is a remote loco that can be run from the ground crew. Yikes!

The Funnel has a drain!

All BNSF traffic from Sandpoint west to Spokane comes in on one rail line ( ex-NP ) and it ends right here. The Latah Bridge is to the left where it has a Wye at the other end that send traffic to Seattle (North leg) or Portland (South leg). The rails dropping down on the right is the old NP line that drops down the South Hill to Marshal where the 2 lines come back together that go south.  I saw a UP train with red CP power that I thought would be a good shot on the Latah Bridge as I knew that they would come over the Latah Bridge as that is one way traffic on the south bound traffic. They never made it in the 45 minutes I was there.

I was the red signal that gave me confidence that it would shortly come out of downtown Spokane but maybe something else was coming to hold him in downtown.

 

With so much traffic noise I almost did not catch this eastbound from Seattle drifting down to the north leg of the wye pulling a bunch of ballast hoppers with sun panels for electricity to open the gates.

 

As the train crossed the Latah bridge I noticed the biker on the old Union Pacific right of way that came into town across the UP High Bridge that is now a bike path crossing I-90.

 

Standing under the wye I also looked at the old SP&S right of way that came out of Hillyard on the GN line. The Feds/and/or/Washington State built a nice new road crossing over I-90 as well.

Latah bridge is a box girder system that is simple yet strong enough to hold many tons of freight trains going on 40 years. A buddy of mine Bruce Nelson was able to walk through this bridge with a friend that would inspect it for cracks. They found one that was letting in sunlight and they closed the bridge for 2 days to patch the crack. Hey, I didn't say it was perfect!

The carpeted club! Plus the skirted club as well.

We have been at our club location for almost 6 years (Sept 1  2008) and we finally got new carpet installed! Kevin the carpet guy is shown finishing up the back side of the layout. No he's not a plumber!

Matching the design straight wise and angle wise was a challenge for Kevin but he came through. That red thing is a roller weight to get out any air bubbles and lumps. We have under-layout lights so when one of us needs to do maintenance we can see what we are doing! The skirting was removed for the carpet install.

So now it's all running trains and stuff as Calvin runs his beautiful 4-6-6-4 Challenger past Keith's new C-425 SP&S units.

They ran nicely but sound is in the future.

The yards were full of foreign power as this Western Pacific F unit set was in need of fuel or something.

Marvin loaded up some of my locos into the roundhouse as they were hanging around looking for their welfare checks.....those bums!

 

Searching for the electrics when there were electrics to chase.

I was searching through my slide collection, now CD collection, including the famous Chuck Heimerdinger photos and realized how much traveling he did back in the early 60s mostly in the west and Canada. Chuck made it to Arizona to catch the Black Mesa coal business with modern electrics.

Chuck is well known for his trip up to Washington and Montana and here he caught all 3 mainline power selections in one place. This is the Deer Lodge yard where a Little Joe, Boxcab and Bi-Polar electrics gather for their next assignment. The yellow was the Milwaukee making a deal with UP and some passenger assignments they cooperated on.

Up the road from Deer Lodge was the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific. They made it to Butte and Anaconda but fell short on the Pacific portion. They hauled ore from the mine in Butte to the smelter in Anaconda. At one time I had the headlight to the #65.

More modern than the boxcabs on the BA&P were there unique diesel looking things with pantographs on top. The yellow thing to the left is a line repair car, non electric for good reasons.

Back in the trolley days these cars were common but on the Yakima Valley Traction it was unique.

 

In California the Big Red cars of Los Angeles were well known but General Motors took care of them with some shifty deals. 

 

 

Mine your own business ....with a train!

Let's say you own a piece of property and someone tells you  its worth a fortune but you need to go down 500, 700, or 1000 feet

to find it. What do you do to bring it up to the top?

Build a railroad would be one answer. That's what they did in Utah to bring out the copper ore so we can have a better life with the commodity available to use in products.

 

Chuck Heimerdinger got permission to travel around the mine to take these photos some 50 years ago. Look at the grades these electric trains had to deal with. That took a lot of men and machines to make it work.

Everything is big...and dangerous. Old #728 has a crane in tow for some project down the hill.

Ugly brutes they are as they are as utilitarian as you can get.

 

Once on the flat bigger and more modern electrics take over to get the ore to the smelter.