Evergreen invaded by the Maine Central Railroad!

In a grand conspiracy with Greg Mercier and myself we planned to have an eastern USA appearance of railroads that we love from the East Coast. I forgot to bring my Susquehanna Railroad stuff so that left Greg to do his part in showing off his Maine Central trains on Thursday.

 

Will Greg ever trust me again? Wait till next week! His connection with the Maine Central has something to do with family stuff.  The Geep above handles the freight and the E7 below handles a mixed freight on the Blue Main. Thanks Greg.

 

Thankfully other members showed up with our western heritage in the form of SP&S FAs roaming

the line with Steve Wesolowski  running this long train.

 

There's the lead unit passing its own caboose so prove how long it was. I think it was 904 cars but I could be wrong?

 

Janis showed up after dinner with a pair of Great Northern U boats. I good example could be made to have the trucks weathered to show detail as the clean black plaster does not show detail in a photo. That might be a hard sell as I don't know how Janis feels about such things?

 

Another prize in Janis's train collection is this 3 truck Shay direct form the factory and ready to move logs and ore cars on the Green branch.

North to Alaska via Evergreen Route

Sometimes I spend a little bit more time on a photo when it is special like this Alaskan beauty of a passenger train that Jim Bowden was running on a Wednesday night that I was there to shoot.

 

Next a coal train shows up with 4 units and 31 coal cars which is the mainstay in income for the Alaska RR.

 

Tuning up ready to depart the Blue yard is Marvin's beautiful Northern Pacific North Coast Limited which I was fortunate to ride the real one  three times before Amtrak took over. Riding the dome cars was the height of luxury to see America.

Greg Mercier had his second favorite railroad running on Thursday in the form of NP F units.

 

Big time Spike Gorley goes modern with 3 BNSF paint schemes on his freight.

 

Marvin's freight on Thursday had the 2 big SD70s in the middle of his consist just like the real ones coming out of Helena. Montana.

Thursday night turns out to be a good steam night!

We start out showing off Jim Bowden's new Canadian National 4-6-2 Pacific running the red line past the Titanic Ice plant. Must be right out of the factory?

 

Making its debut last night was Marvin's miniature version of the MRL executive passenger train that visited Spokane 2 months ago. I painted the blue stripes for him and they await the decals plus a observation car yet to be completed.

 

The power is a brand new SD70 right out of the wash rack to pull the president of the line around his empire in Montana.

 

New member Janis showed up with an eastern railroad model in the form of a Norfolk and Western 4-8-4 pulling a passenger car fleet.

 

Steve Wessolowski had another special train on the rails as this one is a BN big shot train surveying

the property to see what they can remove from the tax rolls. A big building in Fort Worth is where I would start.

 

Jimmy Bowden likes Santa Fe as well as Alaska RR and these yellow F units were in vogue for a time on the railroad. You never know what is going to show up on any given night! Does anyone know why they used yellow when they had a winner with red?

 

 

Remember 3206?

This is a rare photo of the 3206 under steam that one of the NRHS members decided to test it out. The historical society in Spokane moved it to the Spokane Fairgrounds around 1979 so I would guess this is 1982. I will eventually letter the engine to its proper number and details.

 

Well here's my memory of it as my life was intertwined with this engine for many years when I was with the NRHS in Spokane. I helped raise the money to move it from High Bridge park where vandals were taking a toll on it. Got it located in the Fairgrounds for protection and many other things. Woops, there's the edge of the earth!

 

The tender is not right as it was an oil burner, not coal.

 

The 4 passenger cars I got in New Jersey 2 months ago and now represent the type of cars the 3206 would

have pulled from Spokane to Wallace, Idaho and other places back in the day.  The engine came from

the Calvin Tucker estate sale. Smoke would be nice?

 

Marvin's 4 car North Coast Limited crosses Beaver Canyon in the front part of the layout.

 

Greg's 5 unit freight set is making time and money for the man as it traverses the middle section of the layout. The cattle business is still going strong on the railroad.

Aluminum Overcast visits Felts Field on tour of Northwest

My second hobby interest is military history and a B-17 is a big part of a conflict called World War 2. It's on display on Saturday from 9 am to 4 pm at Felt's Field in the Spokane Valley.

 

Without the B-17 doing its thing back in 1942 and onward  it could be argued that Adolph's boys would still be ruling the European continent. The sacrifices the men that flew them is represented in this machine of war.

 

The nose art says it's the "Aluminum Overcast" but I think I heard it was a remake of the real one that did 31 bombing raids over Europe. Many of them did not survive the anti-aircraft fire and the fighters.

 

It was so clean it looked like it just came out of the factory on its way to combat but that was 70 years ago when I was just a mere child.  How many of us could do it today to do what they did so many years ago?

 

By the way, this power set was waiting for clearance to get on the BNSF main at Felt's Field on the UP (ex- Spokane International trackage ) through Spokane.

 

 

Youngster checks out the Evergreen Railroad

This little guy was with his mom at the club for 2 hours or so and was just enamored with steam engines. After running the Big Boy around he spotted the UP Challenger and asked us to run that one as well.

 

Who are we to say no so Tom Kirk did the honors for him with a freight special. ( Smoke would be nice?)

 

Steve Wesolowski brought in a fleet of MRL power pulling a healthy train of company equipment. Steve was video taping this train so millions of viewers will see it someday on their computer screen.

 

This F45 was proudly in the lead as it passed the Titanic Ice factory.

 

Finally I got the NP SD45 for Norm relettered in post merger numbers after redoing the cab with the right windows for NP units. Now all I need is Norms's address so I can get it to him. Does anyone know his address? Norm?

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.