Traintime at Pine Grove

The Mt Hood Railroad runs south out of Hood River to Parkdale. These days the line hauls mostly tourists on a variety of excursions, but in years gone by it made money by hauling lumber products and fruit to the connection with the outside world in Hood River.

Though we frequently visit the folks in Hood River, this is the only time I've ever photographed a MHRR train out on the line. On this occasion we were on a cruise with the PT Cruiser club. We has stopped at the fruit label museum in Pine Grove, when I heard the unmistakeable growl of a working diesel locomote approaching. I scooted out the door in time to capture this image of the afternoon's excursion passing through "downtown" Pine Grove with Mt. Adams in the background.

The Mountains's High

Another shot from my 1983 Colorado trip. This is on the joint line, so called because the tracks were used jointly by the Santa Fe, the Burlington Northern, and the Rio Grande railroads. It is a very busy line, running south from Denver, to Colorado Springs where the lines diverge onto their own tracks. A lot of long, heavy trains run here. Mostly coal from the mines of Colorado and Wyoming bound for power generating stations in Texas and the southeast.

This shot has a southbound Santa Fe near the town of Castle Rock, Colorado. It is immediately adjacent to I-25, whose lanes can be seen just in front of the lead locomotive. Towering above that locomotive is snow covered Pikes Peak, which at 14,000 plus feet is a good mile and a half higher than the elevation of the tracks.

The area around Castle Rock is another of those locations where urbanization ran wild in just a few years. When I was there is 1983, Castle Rock was still a sleepy small town. On a visit ten years later it had become engulfed in the suburbs of Denver. Rural locations I had photographed on my first trip had been converted to housing tracts and strip malls.

End of Track

One of my earliest train photos, taken in Riverton, Wyoming back in 1975. Riverton was the end of the line for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, being as far west as the railroad still ran. It didn't run much, only two or three times a week, as there was little business on the line. At one time the line had extended another 30 miles west, to Lander, the town where I lived. That line had been pulled up some years previously. Back in the golden days of railroading, the 1890s, plans were made to extend the line over South Pass to connect with the Central Pacific Railroad in Ogden, creating another transcontinental mainline. The financial panic of 1893 killed that, and the line was destined to be just a long branch. Another financial panic, the recession of the early 1980s finally killed the line, and the rails were taken up not too long afterward.

A Nice Place for a Picnic

One nice late summer day Donna and I decided to go for a drive up into the Cascades. There were a couple of photo locations I wanted to check out. We thought we might do a little exploring, too.

One of the locations was where the Cascade Line crosses Salmon Creek, just uphill from Oakridge. I had ridden through on Amtrak and thought it had some possibilities. I found it on the map, too, but had never taken any shots here. So, we packed some snacks, some chairs, loaded up Rusty, and headed up the hill.

There is a fish hatchery on Salmon Creek, just out of town. It sits adjacent to the creek, and is publicly accessible. Since it appeared to be close to where I wanted to go, we drove in. Once on the grounds, I noticed a dirt road out back that seemed like a possibility. Down the road we went, ending up at this spot. Exactly where I wanted to be! We broke out the chairs and snacks, I setup the tripod and camera, Rusty frolicked in the creek. Now all we needed was a train!

And what a train it turned out to be. By this time, the Southern Pacific had been part of the Union Pacific for five years, and most evidence from SP days was gone. Nearly all the SP locomotives had been either painted yellow or scrapped.  Catching two SP units leading a train here was good fortune.

Trains Don't Run Here, Anymore

The original rail line from Oregon to California went south from Eugene, through Roseburg, Medford, Ashland, then over the Siskiyous through tunnel 13 at the summit. This tunnel was the site of the last train robbery in the United States, in 1923. Because it was the only route south (until the Cascade Line was built in the late 1920s) the Southern Pacific invested lots of money in track and signals, including a semaphore system that was state of the art at the time.

Fast forward to the late 1990s. Most traffic has been diverted off this line, in favor of the easier route over Willamette Pass. The SP no longer runs this line, having turned over operations to the Central Oregon and Pacific. By this late date, only one train a day each way traversed this steep but scenic route south of Medford, rejoining the mainline near Weed, California. CORP ran the train in daylight hours, so the guys and I decided to head south one day to follow it on the journey over the hill. We captured the train climbing out of the Rogue River valley at Talent, Oregon splitting a pair of the 1920 era blades. CORP has not run any trains over this line for several years now, and all the semaphores have been taken down.

No One in Their Right Mind Would Go Here

Hoboken, New Jersey is not a destination anyone in their right mind would ever go to. Unless you are one of the thousands of commuters who ride the trains everday into and out of New York City. Or, a crazy railfan!

In the early 1980s the operation was still using the original equipment built circa 1910 by the Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railway. Which is why us crazy railfans went there. The cars were pretty beat up by that time, hot in summer, cold in winter, and uncomfortable all year round. At this date the state of New Jersey was just beginning to replace this old junk with new. It was definitely a place we had to go photograph.

This location is the western end of the Hoboken Tunnels. The city of Hoboken sits atop the tunnels, and the station where commuters transfer to a subway for New York City is on the other end. To get here we had to climb through a fence and down a cliff face, while dodging all the trash, and hoping not to get accosted by anyone. Once we got down here, we had to find a place where we could get decent photos, but be out of the way of the trains and the high voltage catenary that powered them! I also had to deal with the issue of sneezing my head off every minute or so. The Ragweed was awful! I popped lots of Allerest, but that only succeeded in putting me to sleep for the long ride home.

End of an Era Part II

Another view of the Rio Grande Zephyr. The night before the last westbound run we spent quite a bit of time in Denver Union Station taking photos. I like this shot because it shows the train and the station. It also shows the character of this classic streamliner. Stainless steel, curved lines, matched cars, and six dome cars for watching the scenery made this the epitome of the last stage of the golden era of passenger trains, right after WWII. When a person thought of a passenger train, this is what came to mind.

End of an Era

By the 1960s, the network of privately owned and run passenger trains in the US was a disaster. None were making any money, and most were driving the operating railroads into bankruptcy. The Interstate Highway System, jet aircraft, old and worn out equipment were all contributing factors. By 1970 transportation planners realized that a viable passenger rail network was vital to the national security. After much political wrangling, a federally run system, the National Rail Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK) was formed to run a basic route structure. Money losing railroads had a choice of continuing to subsidize their own passenger trains, or have Amtrak take them over by making an upfront monetary contribution. Most lines decided to pay up and have Amtrak take over, but a few resisted, for various reasons. One of those resisting lines was the Denver & Rio Grande, running between Denver and Salt Lake City. The line opted to continue running their Rio Grande Zephyr six days a week between those two cities, going east one day and west the next. They connected with Amtrak trains in both cities.

By 1983 the economic situation had changed. The nation was in the throes of a recession. Rail traffic was down. The 45 year old equipment used on the Zephyr was worn out. Management decided it was in their best interest to let Amtrak take over the route. The last runs of the Zephyr, the last privately operated intercity passenger train in the country, were scheduled for April.

With that in mind, my buddy and I decided to take a week off from work, and head for Colorado. Neither of us had done any railfanning there before. The  Zephyr was our primary reason for the trip, but there was lots of other interesting rail action for us, too. We hoped to see some Rio Grande freights, among other things.

Things didn't turn out quite like we had planned. The week before the last run was scheduled, the mainline was severed by a massive landslide at Thistle, Utah. That meant no through freight activity, bad for us. It also meant that the Zephyr would only travel as far as Grand Junction, in western Colorado, instead of all the way to Salt Lake City. Good for us!

The picture here is the westbound Zephyr, in Glenwood Canyon, along the Colorado River. This is a spectacularly scenic stretch of line. This train is the second to the last westbound run. We were in Denver for the departure of the last run two days later. A lot of other folks were, too. Railfans, history buffs, regular folks, and news crews both local and national were on hand for the end of an era.

Beantown

One of the first organized (and I use that term loosely) railfan trips I ever went on was to Boston, in 1981. And, I got my boss to both tell me to go and pay for it! I had recently started a new job at a large, Ivy League university. We were given a donation of a large amount of equipment. The only catch was that we had to go get it ourselves - the company making the donation was  in Boston. My friend (a real hardcore railfan) who was the supervisor of another department, had charge of bringing the stuff back in two trucks. Since my department provided support services to his, he conveniently borrowed me to drive one of the trucks, and analyze the stuff to determine it's condition.  Our schedule for picking the equipment up gave us some free time between our arrival in Boston and our ability to load the trucks the next day. We took full advantage of that free time.

This was my first exposure to the high density railroading of the northeast. I had never before been to a place like South Station. The hustle and bustle, the sheer number of people and trains were all new to me. We spent some time on and at the end of the platforms, capturing outgoing commuter trains backed by the high rise skyline of downtown. I got to see a lot of stuff I had only read about before. Our time trackside ended all too soon, as we had to load up and head home. Driving the truck through the congested and narrow streets of Boston wasn't much fun, but that's a different story, for another time and place.

Southern Serves the South, Part II

For many years it was an semi annual tradition for my friend John and I to go on a couple of  long weekend railfan expeditions. The last weekend of March and  Columbus Day weekend we'd be on the road heading for somewhere we had read or heard about. Since our time was limited, so was our geographic range - the Carolinas to the south or Ohio to the west was the reasonable limit of travel. Longer trips - to Chicago and points west - had to wait until summer when we could take more time off work.

One year we reached Richmond, Virginia on our Columbus Day adventure. Our goal was to catch one of the last excursion runs of the season. Since we had left home just after work, we arrived in Richmond in the wee hours of the morning. Too keyed up from the drive to get to sleep,we headed to the Amtrak station to see if any scenes presented themselves. Nothing at the station itself, but just up the tracks the RF&P Railroad had conveniently parked one of their switchers. We took advantage of the opportunity and got several nice shots, just enough to unwind and let the tiredness catch up to us so we could catch some ZZZs before daylight, and the special train we had come to see.

Southern Serves the South

Through the 1970s and 80s, several major railroads had active excursion programs. By using historic diesels and or steam locomotives, the lines got their name out in front of the public in a positive light. Two of the most active programs were run by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Southern Railway.

The Southern mainline ran from Washington DC to New Orleans, with their other lines crisscrossing those various states. They had the most active program, with runs almost every weekend throughout the summer covering the entire system. It was a real class operation, too. Trains were pulled by classic 1950s era diesel passenger locomotives or a variety of steamers of various vintages. On the mainline trips they would go at maximum track speed, up to 80 MPH. Trainsets would be up to 24 matched cars, and passengers had their choice of coach or first class accommodations.

I took this shot in the summer of 1984. It is just outside of Washington DC, on the return trip to that city after the run south to Charlottesville Virginia. It was a typical hot, humid, muggy Virginia day, I remember the temperature being in the high 90s, with the humidity seemingly 110%. Pretty awful day to be outside running around, but six guys in a van speeding along the roads of rural Virginia in search of photo locations weren't too bothered. When I took this shot the location was out in the country, miles from anywhere. When I returned in subsequent years I was amazed that it had turned into suburbia.

Logs

One of the things I find photogenic about trains is the uniformity when all the cars are the same. Whether it be a passenger train with a line of stainless steel cars gleaming in the sun, a unit grain train with a long string of identical jumbo hoppers, a 10,000 ton 100 car coal train with  hoppers piled high with black diamonds, or as frequently seen in Eugene (but few other places) a log train, there is something about a matched consist that catches my eye.

The Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad is part of the chain that moves cut logs from Canada south to Roseburg to supply the mills of Douglas county with raw material. CORP handles the logs on the last stage of the journey, from Eugene to points south. I can frequently catch this train as it passes through Eugene, as in this view from  August, 2004. The train is about to pass by the Eugene Amtrak station, with the towering silos of Eugene Grain Millers in the background.  The train made an impressive sight, with dozens of loaded log cars following two matched locomotives.

Sunday Afternoon Bike Ride

I don't get out on my bike as often as I would like. When I do, I always bring the camera, because, hey, you never know what you're going to come across. This picture is a great example. Out for an easy ride on a nice Sunday afternoon I headed down to the tracks to see what I could see. Sundays are usually pretty slow on the railroad around here, so I wasn't expecting anything of interest.

The railroad location of West Springfield (geographically east of east Springfield according to the railroad) is about the closest point on the mainline to home. An industrial branch comes off the main here, and in the distance (visible on the right) is a signal to give some indication of nearby train activity.  I was rather surprised when I pedaled up to see that the signal was lit red, indicating a train was coming my way! Doubly surprised when the train arrived, since this train usually passes through pre-dawn. Triply surprised when I noticed the locomotive in the lead. Not too many of this model were built, and those didn't have long careers. It was an attempt to build a very high horsepower locomotive (6000 vs the more normal 4500), but  the components didn't hold up and they proved problematic for the railroad. It was unusual to see one leading a train.