What is it anyway?

This is the sun at 4:30 pm on Friday August 17th as there was so much smoke in the air from the fires burning hundreds of miles away but we get the wind direction our way.

 

I included the edge of a building on East Sprague and there were clouds passing through the shot. At times the sun just disappeared from view.

 

This shot may be out of focus or it shows the separation between the sun and the glow of the nuclear blasts emanating from it.

 

Our Saturday run session for a family that asked if we could run trains for them got Steve Welton and I running a diesel coal train and my UP Big Boy with the military train.

 

Something of a rare occasion was this New York Central Heritage unit passing through Spokane last week. I didn't shoot it but it was sent to me by a fellow railfan of note. Nice catch! The Central is long gone but the owner Norfolk Southern has a number of their units painted in predessor colors. Oh yea, BNSF has logos on their grain cars of their group. None on their BNSF cop cars.

 

Last but not least are these plaques I made for Mike and Bob Applegate that they can hang on their walls in their train rooms. They are NP fans and have been members of the Evergreen train club for almost 7 years. They both live far away and visit the club on occasion but their involvement has been valuable and are part of our success as a train club and I wanted to thank them while I still had the ability to make the plaques for them. Member Bob Gadsby made he art. Thanks guys! They are in the mail to Whitefish!

Same railroad.... 3 different paint shcemes

While going to work I noticed a blinking yellow light on one of the BNSF signal towers so I made a trek to the Irvin Bridge with 3 seconds to spare and caught these three fellas moving a very long coal train. I checked for any coal dust but could not come up with any.

 

Beside 3 units on the front this pusher is assisting with a push on the rear so less strain is put on the couplers to hold 100 plus cars together. The engineer in the lead unit runs this one as well.

 

I made my way down Trent Avenue about one mile and saw another headlight that was following the coal train and this one was quite unusual as it turned out to be the Boeing Air Force!

 

They are assembled in the midwest and sent to Everett or Seattle for final assembly as long as they stay out of the rivers along the way. One day I catch a passenger train, the next day I catch a airplane train. The best part is that no one caught me!

 

This guy was waiting for the Boeing train to pass and started backing up into Yardley with this collection of slightly rusted tanks? boilers? atom bombs? on very long drop bottom flat cars for such loads.

 

On the way home I stopped at the train clug to do a little painting for one of the members on his diesel and found a crew doing new track lighting of rhte back of the club! Scotty was doing great work with supervisors Marvin and Keith keeping an eye on him. It must be a union job?

Tales from the crypt ...err...club.

Just like the real railroads we employed the same trick to recover an errant steam engine that failed on the road. Our green branch is difficult to reach in some places so on the the guys decided to bring in a diesel of the same railroad to save it from the torch.

 

New member Bob Gadsby goes modern with a brand new Dash 9 pulling a deslectic collection of cars including Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.

 

Bob's most unique car was this Oscar Meyer load bringing 2 of their famous automobiles decked out with the famous hot dog on the top. Tie downs would be nice?

 

Marvin went 1950's on us with his 2 GP9s in his favorite railroad passing Bakersville.

 

John Schwarze must be showing off the first days of the BN with 4 different locos with 3 of the

merger roads represented...GN, Burlington and NP. The interloper is a leased Western Pacific unit.

Greg filled in the holes in the mountain with plaster gauze. Next week we add scenery.

 

Spike Gorley had his BNSF train pulling a long container train on the Blue Main. Looks like Evergreen territory is having a shortage of rainfall as well.

Leftovers from the leftovers.

New member Janis shows off her variety of equipment with a little 2-6-0 pulling a passenger train that I rode on some 40 years ago from Durango to Silverton on the Denver & Rio Grande Western. The water car is a nice touch as there may be a need down the tracks. Look at all those nice little orange passenger cars....and orange ice reefers!

 

Maybe we should have called our club the Orange club as that color seems to show up more often than any other?

 

See, more orange! Its not my imagination, is it?

 

More orange, again!  Where are the color police?

 

Even Mike Baker as fallen into to the orange virus syndrome !

 

Oh, this isn't orange but good old Evergreen Green! It's a caddy for all the Digitract controllers that need a home!

At least they are not orange!

 

 

 

 

Let there be Lights!

The 8 foot flouresent tube lights are gone and 18 can lights on tracks are in place at the rear of the club.

 

Here is a random shot of Mount Whitney without any additional lighting needed so the photos should be better than before with the new system. Thanks to Scotty, Marvin and Keith who did

most of the work and purchased all the equipment.

 

Greg Mercier filled in the gaps in the mountain with plaster cloth to make ready for the "Oatmeal" filler and the retaining walls

Another example of better lighting is the yard at the port district so my life will be easier to make these e-mails good good.

 

Tom Kirk get a lesson in airbrush at the spray booth yesterday. The cab is being held by a cardboard tube to keep fingers off wet paint.

Scotty Smith clowns it up with this animated head he built for a church function out of blue foam. He says the eyes can move by some magic feature. You don't argue with a guy twice your size!

All play and no work makes JIm and Marvin want to fix stuff.

Like any railroad in the world or any where else you need to fix stuff to make it work properly. Jim Bowden and Marvin Sheppard made short work or a major repair in adding a new switch for the log reload and fix a slight droop in one of the mainlines.  This stuff does not fix itself!

Careful measuring and adjustments are important as our little couplers seems to find any weakness in the system. Plenty of padding and plywood keeps the tracks underneath from getting hurt. (and knees too!)

They got everything in place so the guys were able to run on Thursday night including this monster of a train being assembled by Steve Wesolowski with 3 large GEs and 40 well cars with 86 containers. What, you don't believe me?

Steve put the train through its paces and worked perfectly just like the right ones! Count 'em!

Here is the tail shot of the Hyundai container train with the power in the distance background. Who

said you can't run big trains at the Evergreen?

Greg Mercier had this huge NP train running most of the day with 5 freight units on the point.

Thursday action on the Evergreen

It's 1967 all over again as Scotty Smith brings back the Empire Builder with a vary well detailed  F unit set in charge.

 

Greg Mercier likes more than SP&S as this Maine Central GP9 shows. Greg's wife is from the northeast and Greg rode a few trains back there.

 

Milwaukee Raod steam brings a freight train over Beaver Canyon as a lone fisherman does not seem to mind the proximity of his demise.

 

A local SP&S Alco passes a relic of the past in the form of a water tank that is not needed by diesels.

2 F units a tested to see if they can keep up with track speed with a hefty Builder in tow on a tough grade in the front of the layout. Scotty Smith is the owner.

 

Finally, we have another member from the great state of Idaho join the ranks of the Evergreen. His name is Mike Conners and he now makes for the 5th Mike in the train club.

MRL passenger train visits Spokane.....and go right back east.

One in a 100 times when I travel home from the office I take the scenic route along the BNSF tracks and find something out of the ordinary. Today was such a day.  Time 5:00 pm, Monday 6/8/15. One of the classiest passenger train you will ever see is this Montana Rail Link train arriving in Spokane for a brief stay.  It's pulled by a huge SD70 that is sparkling clean!

 

The 6 cars included 2 dome cars and an observation car. Probably a diner in there somewhere.

 

The shades are pulled as it came west in 100 degree heat and I never saw anyone in the cars but I'm sure someone was in there.

 

You could be my very best, good friend if you owned this car! What a way to travel and take in the northwest scenery from a dome car or observation car!  Dennis Washington owns MRL and I think he is a model railroader .....but in full scale.

It stopped east of Yardley for a moment as I took my final shot. Keith Wiles just told me on the phone that it was turned on the wye near the turntable and headed back to Montana. MRL has trackage rights to Spokane but they don't come this far west very often. Thank you Dennis!

SP&S rules the Evergreen!

The Queen Mary is what they could call the SP&S #750 as she was the only E unit on the roster. Here she leads a Steve Wesloski passenger train with a lowly F unit in tow past the Spokane International yard.

 

Here she pulls into the Evergreen Union Station to pick up more customers on their way to Spokane.

 

Her journey passes a freight train pulled by Keith's Alco FA power heading in the other direction.

 

The square nose of an FA was a distinctive difference from the EMD

F units that were the standard around the country.

 

Staying out of the traffic were my SP&S C-636s as they needed maintanance on something or another.

 

They meet up with each other again on this crossover in the front part of the layout. The engineer of #750 is going to be surprised when he comes to an abrupt dead end. But I got the shot...right?