Moon or Miami or...sun over Missoula?

If you guessed the sun coming up on Sunday, Sept. 16th you win the big prize!   With so many western fires going the smoke was pretty intense.
I was even more red than what the photo shows. 

While driving down East Sprague yesterday I noticed the old Children's dentist office had repainted the E unit and is now for sale or lease. The loco is a shell and the passenger car was the operating room and the caboose was his office. John is long gone and its looking for its 3 life. The loco started out as a Pennsylvania passenger unit, then was Amtrak before it was turned into this non-prototypical Southern Pacific color scheme with Spokane International letters.

 
No more edge of the earth at Evergreen Railroad. I have cleaned up a few skies with Photoshop so I thought I would try my hand into getting the edge
filled in to represent a more realistic photo with Steve Welton's Kansas City Southern engines making the rounds.

 
New member Doug Sassman brought this BN F45 from me then asked me if I could make it into a Northern Pacific loco? Well prototype be dammed so I did it as they never had this model when the were in business as NP.

 
I got this Pennsy GG1 electric in a garage sale at a good deal a few weeks ago so I put it through a simple dusting on the top, rusted the wheels and side frames and dull coated the body to remove the factory plastic look. I think it helped. How many of you noticed the wheel off the track? You only see that kind of thing in the photo but not when you are taking the photograph.

Four years and counting!

Exactly four years ago we started the Evergreen RR club with 12 members and a dream. On September 1st, 2008 was our official start of a hope that  we could get more members, plan a layout that would be interesting and start building something that is considered special in the hobby world

Did we succeed? We think so as I will show a few examples of what we have done. Our current roster is 28 members and we have room for 2 more. We have money in the bank to pay our rent, electricity, and a few bucks left over for making the layout even better.

How much better can a model railroad club get?  Mount Whitney is now a favorite spot of mine to shoot trains traversing the mountain.

This photo is about a year old as the Blue main yard has been completely ballasted by the Evergreen crew.

Other than the port area which we will discuss this Thursday night at our meeting the layout seems nearing completion. We invite anyone to stop by on our regular get togethers on Tuesday afternoons and Thursdays from 1 pm to about 9 pm.  We love showing it off and we are finalizing a new 5 year lease agreement with the landlord. That gives us a lot of confidence that what we build will survive till September  2017 and perhaps beyond.

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.

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.

Something old, something new!

Big Al Cunningham run his beautiful Canadian engines each with their appropriate passenger cars. Each came at the need for good looking trains but took different routes. The Maroon and Grey was taken by the Canadian Pacific and the two tone Green was taken by the Canadian National. Wouldn't it be a real treat to ride in either one today?

 

 Something new as it never was. This is an F45 that used to be my BN F45 but I sold it to one of our new members that wanted it in Northern Pacific. The price was right so enjoy a "what if".

 

The Port is open! The Occupy Cobbleton Port protesters have finally departed when management threatened to cut off electricity to the campers.
The club will discuss future plans for this area next Thursday. This is the last of the big projects left for the club to work on.

 

Management felt bad for the Occupy Port crowd so they constructed this work bench for the great unwashed to do their dirty work like weathering equipment, fixing things that weren't broken and add things that don't need them. I think I have everyone confused.

 

Jim Bowden had multiple trains running but the pride of the fleet was his 4-8-4 Santa Fe steamer.

What do you know about steam engines?

When I got into the railroad scene in 1965 I knew nothing about railroads or why things were theway they were. Steam engines fascinated me but I didn't know why. This is a replica of the Union Pacific #119 that was at the Gold Spike celebration back in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah.I was there in 1969, drats I only missed it by 100 years! It is called an American 4-4-0.

This old clunker was called a Camelback because the cab sat in the middle of the engine. The fireman was in the back of the loco and the engineer sat in the cab. This was an 0-6-0 because of the wheel arrangement.

This is Bakersfield in 1955 on the Southern Pacific and I was tempted to put smoke and steam coming out to look

like the train was at speed. I thought better of it so the kids are not in danger.

Today the Southern Pacific engine similar to the previous one still runs around the Northwest. It's called a Daylight 4-8-4 Northern.

 It was featured in1 990 when it ran from Wenatchee to Leavenworth, Washington in celebration of the states Centennial. The City of Portland, Oregon owns it.  Spokane owns a bus!

Another darling of modern steam engines has to be the Union Pacific's 8444 or 844 depending on the time line. We see it here on the Joso Bridge crossing the Snake River from Oregon to Washington. I included this photo to show the bridge more than the engine because of its size. They need to get over this bridge to get to Spokane and to their SI connection to Canada. This shot was taken in 1974 as it heads to Expo 74.

Six Boeing aircraft fly low to the ground!

Driving down Trent Avenue sometimes pays dividends. Today I found this train loaded with aircraft bodies and support containers.

 

 I got up on the Havana bridge to record it at this new  train spotting sight.

 

 Check the serial numbers so maybe someday you will be flying on one of these planes. They build them back east and assemble them in Everett, WA.

 

One train was heading east and had all these containers on board. When did they name a container company after our train club?

 

A wind devil made an appearance to Yardley today and really kicked up a lot of dust. Does this qualify us for a Federal Disaster Loan?

 

Remembering the Milwaukee Road

After waiting 3 hours on a hillside in Rosalia, Washington here comes an westbound over a very unique concrete bridge that still stands today but without rails or even a railroad. I remember it was cold and windy!

A  favorite photo of mine was shot by our pal Chuck Heimerdinger who came up here to Dawson, Montana from sunny California back in the 1960s. The formatting on this photo is terrific showing the 2 kinds of electric locomotives they were running back in the good old days. Is today going to be considered by some as the good old days in 20 years?

I don't remember who shot this photo but it wasn't me because I am in the shot with my pretty white pants in a railroad yard! The place was Deer Lodge, Montana a busy spot for the railroad back in the day.

Back in the day when I could climb hills without catching my breath,  my good friend Leon Callaway from California came up here to see the final days of Milwaukee Road electric operations. The date is May 15th, 1974 and the power will be shut off in exactly 1 month to go. 

One of my all time favorites was me catching these old Boxcab eclectics in helper service at East Portal, Montana, which is on the Montana/Idaho border and about ready to enter a long tunnel. First off I was lucky to have my 300mm lens on as I didn't know they were coming until I saw them. Second, if they didn't have empty flat cars in the front of the engines, then no shot would be possible. Third, there was still sufficient light to stop the action with not much time to decide focal length, speed of the camera and formatting the shot. Lucky seems to come to my mind at being in the right place at the right time. Remember these are 50 year old machines when I took these photos, not many locomotives are around that long! I was in a time warp!

I remember Spokane especially the Great Northern

We lived in Spokane for almost 2 years before the cold winter of 1968-69 arrived and did I think twice about the wisdom of moving here! On this day in January 1969 the weather was minus 20 degrees and looking at the water to the east of the Great Northern station you can see the "heat" coming off the water in relation to the air temps.

Big Sky Blue was about to be bumped from the railroad as the BN merger is about to take over. This is a view of Hillyard looking northeast from the Francis Ave bridge. Western Fruit Express is in the background. Now this scene has but 2 tracks passing through to Colville, Washington.

One of my all time favorite places to take photos was at the Great Northern station where you could cross the tracks at Howard Street, park the car next to the tracks and take pictures without anybody stopping you or even question you and your intent. The Empire Builder came in late to Spokane and handed over cars to the SP&S for the Portland, Oregon train. The tower is the only thing remaining in this photo.

The Western Star was my favorite train to photograph on the GN as it arrived in Spokane around 2:30 pm and departed at 3 pm. Check out the clock.

The 1968 NRHS convention in Spokane gave us access to Hillyard where major repairs were made to GN equipment. It was a huge facility that fell out of favor with the BN officials who looked for ways to economize on their property. It employed over 500 people at one time and now Hillyard is long gone. Check out that crazy company car on the bottom.

Future photo spot for non trespassing railfans.

It's almost finished! The overpass on Havana Road is now paved and stripped and soon will be available for train shooting into the BNSF ( NP ) Parkwater/ Yardley, Washington. This was my favorite viewing spot before the bridge was built.

The water continues to rise in the mill pond. I would guess another 1/4 inch of liquid should do it.

The cars are lining up with extra logs and stuff on the other side of the mill. Soon production smoke will be rising from those smokestacks.

Brock and James showed up Thursday and ran these 3 monster SD90s on the railroad. They ran smoothly and are could pull lots of cars just like their big brothers.

 Mr. Persistence, Al Cunningham finally got his 3 CN locos to pull together and took his 30 car train around Old City.

And now...the 10 o'clock news from Greenacres, Washington

Allan had his 2 CP engines pulling a loaded 20 car coal train. They were even burning the stuff to make their locos go!

My newest addition to the roster is this rare 2-6-6-2 Weyerhaeuser steam engine which there were only 2 ever built for the backwoods of America. The Weyerhaeuser caboose is a figment of my imagination but I needed something for my log train.

2 of Jim Bowden's Big CN locos pass by the mill that is taking shape of the end of the front part of the layout.

Steve Welton's big UP engines lead by Heritage WP #1983. We now have 3 Steves in the club. At one time we had 4 Mikes.