A Railfan's "Bachelor Party" Road Trip

I don't even want to imagine what the phrase Bachelor Party Road Trip may mean to most other young men, but for a railfan it means putting as many miles behind you as possible and bagging as many train photos as possible before the realities of marriage, family and career crush your full railfan aspirations forever.

 

Magma Arizona Baldwins - the Real Purpose for My Trip

School was letting out in mid-April, 1990 and Nici and I were planning to marry the following July.  I’d been talking with James Bradley, who was now living in Phoenix and managing a sub shop for William, our old boss.  James had invited me down to stay with him for a week, and when I found out that Stan, one of my apartment mates, was also driving down to Phoenix when school let out, the plan came together.  There was a girl in our ward from Flagstaff, and the three of us agreed to caravan down that far with her, have dinner with her family, and then Stan and I would continue down to Phoenix.  I rode down with Stan as far as Panguitch or Kanab, and then I switched over to ride with the girl.  One thing I remember from that part of the trip was laughing when Stan got a speeding ticket just after crossing into Arizona at Page.  As planned, we had dinner with her family in Flagstaff, and then Stan and I headed south and he dropped me off at James’ apartment.

I don’t remember in exactly what order things happened.  There were some limitations on our activities in that James still had to be at the sub shop much of the time.  A couple times I was able to take his car and look around Phoenix a little, including checking out a couple hobby shops.  I remember there being Circle Ks on nearly every corner, it seemed.  James had a girlfriend, and she spent some time with us.  One time we went out to a dance club with her, and afterward she and James got into an argument about something.  He was really PO’d about it after she left, so I suggested that maybe this was a good time to get out of town and go chase some trains.  Phoenix is a lot like Boise in that the freight mainline (SP, in the case of Phoenix) bypasses the city several miles to the south, with a secondary passenger line looping up into the city.  We did watch Amtrak run on that line once in the dark (with two GE P-30CH’s – the usual power for the Sunset Limited at the time), but for mainline freight action, we would need to go down to the small town of Maricopa.

One problem was that the radiator in James’ Chevette was leaking pretty badly, and he had to keep topping it off when he drove.  We went to the sub shop and filled an empty 5-gallon salad oil container with water, and after topping off the radiator, we headed south.  About half way to Maricopa (16 total miles away), the engine started to overheat and we used half of our water jug to re-fill it.  Of course, by the time we got to Maricopa, we had lost all that water and would not be able to go any farther without water.  It was too late to get any that night, so we parked in a lot alongside the tracks, and crashed in the back of his car where we had placed a thin mattress for that purpose before we left Phoenix.

The next morning, we woke up knowing we had to figure out how to get out of town.  Fortunately, there was a small repair shop just opening up down the highway.  We drove in there, explained our predicament to the guy, and he was all over getting us taken care of.  He pulled the radiator right there and proceeded to locate and solder the leak.   I walked over to the small convenience store and bought a box of doughnuts, a quart of milk, and a bottle of Pepsi for my breakfast.  Good thing I had the Pepsi, because I needed it to rinse out my mouth when the milk turned out to be sour!  By the time I had the sour milk taste out of my mouth, the radiator was back in the car and we were ready to go.   Best part – they guy only charged James $10 for the fix!  Don’t know if he ever did, but James promised himself he would always take his car down to this guy for any future repairs.

Anyway, now that the car was drivable, we decided to continue south and try to visit Mexico.  We got on the freeway, turned south at Tucson and were soon in Nogales, AZ, and then across the border to Nogales, Mexico.  It was funny how obvious the differences were in the look of the two neighboring cities.  We drove through town, found the railroad station and engine servicing facility.  We took photos of a few odd-ball locomotives (I’m still not sure exactly what they were – probably home-shop rebuilds with EMD and Alco parts intermixed).  We tried to continue south to a rail junction we saw on the map named Benjamin Hill, but it was too much of a hassle to figure out the auto insurance we would need to buy, so we just looked around Nogales a little before crossing the border again.

At the check-in station on the US side of the border, we ran into a little trouble.  The Border Patrol agent wasn’t much older than we were, and the exchange went something like this:

“Are you both US citizens?”

“Yes.”

“How long were you in Mexico?”

“About an hour.”

“Did you buy anything?”

“No.”

“What was the purpose of your trip?”

“Watching trains.”

Pause . . .

“Pull over there!”

It seems that two guys in their early twenties driving all the way down to Nogales just to watch trains for an hour didn’t quite fit into his idea of normal behavior.  Of course, the mattress and blankets in the back of the car would’ve made a great hiding place for whatever contraband we could be smuggling across the border, so I really don’t blame the guy for flagging us for further inspection.  The more experienced agent that searched the car and questioned us more in depth could easily see that we were what we said we were.  He accepted our story about watching trains, and the presence of some copies of Trains and Model Railroader that we also had in the car reinforced our explanation.  He did look through our things, checked under the mattress, and peeked in a couple of the obvious hiding locations in the body of the car.  Then he wished us luck, waved us through, and got on with the business of busting real smugglers.

On the way back, between Tucson and Phoenix, we saw several trains on the SP mainline, and we even made a cab visit with a crew who was waiting in the siding.

Mainline Power on the SP Between Tucson and Maricopa

Another important side-trip we made, and the real purpose for my trip to Arizona, was to go up toward Superior to see if we could witness the Magma Arizona Railroad operating any of their Baldwin diesels.  We went up there one day in the middle of the week.  We drove up all the way to Superior first, and went into the office at the copper mine.  James tried to bluff his way into the shop for pictures, and that attempt failed, but they were helpful enough to let us know the train had headed downhill earlier and could still be down at Magma Junction, their connection with the SP.

 

We scurried back down there, and somehow found the right road to get to the junction.  I was hoping to see their big six-axle road switcher (DRS-6-6-1500 number 10), but instead the train had their two S-8 switchers (numbers 8 and 9), MU’ed in “elephant style”.  They did some switching to put their train together, and then they headed back up the hill to Superior.  We photographed them at several locations, and followed the dirt road that paralleled the tracks up a desert canyon on their approach to Superior.  I wish I’d had a video camera to record the spectacle, because the engines had been “shotgunned” (or whatever they called it), with one exhaust stack for each cylinder, and as they ran, you could see individual puffs of exhaust over the stacks as each cylinder fired in its correct order.  The sound was pretty good too.  We took lots of photos, and most of mine turned out as well as could be expected.  Although I was disappointed at not seeing the DRS running that day, in retrospect, watching two Baldwin switchers working in tandem like that was probably an even more rare experience.

Dodging Cactus and Cattle

Making a Run for the Superstitions

At the end of the week, and per our original plan, James and I left Phoenix in his car and drove up through Kingman, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas to get to Provo.  We stopped at Kingman to photograph a Santa Fe GP-20/GP-30 power set in the yard, and to watch an ATSF train climb eastbound up through the canyon west of there.  At Henderson, NV, we passed Railroad Pass Casino, which we took as a positive omen.  However, we ended up losing several dollars at the blackjack table.  Finally, early the next morning, we pulled into Provo.  I bought James one last tank of gas, and he dropped me at my apartment where my car was waiting, before he took off.

One problem with my trip to Phoenix was that I financed the whole thing on my new Discover credit card.  It had a $1000 limit, and I hadn’t kept very close track of my finances.  At one point, I even loaned James som cash, because he couldn’t afford to drive me up to Provo.  My first order of business before leaving Provo was to withdraw some more cash against my card to pay for gas and food.  Guess what…the card was now maxed out and I couldn’t get any cash!!

Knowing I may be stranded without some gas money, I headed up to the BYU Bookstore to commit a crime.  Sort of.  The bookstore had a policy of cashing students’ checks up to a $75 maximum.  I knew my Zion’s Bank checking account was empty, but I went ahead and cashed a check against that account, hoping I’d find some way to cover it later before the check cleared.  This was on a Friday, so I knew that would give me time.  Fortunately, this was in the day when you could still drive from Provo to Spokane in a ’72 Galaxie for less than $75.  Good luck doing that today!  Even then, I probably didn’t have much left for food, but I don’t remember what I did to avoid starvation on my trip.

On my way north through Utah, I took a side trip out to the Golden Spike Monument at Promontory (my first time – I’ve been back at least twice since then), but otherwise the trip to Nampa was uneventful and I found Shad Roe’s house without any real trouble.  Shad was a former missionary companion, and he was also in the process of courting a Danish girl he’d met on his mission.  (They ended up getting married, too – I visited them in ’93 while they lived near Aarhus – and then they divorced.  But that came a lot later.)  Shad and I stayed up and chatted for a while before I went to sleep.  When I woke up there the next day, Shad had already left for work.  But, his mom fed me breakfast and saw me on my way.

From there, I drove north toward Horseshoe Bend and continued along the Payette and Salmon River canyons, up over White Bird Pass, across the Camas Prairie, down to the Clearwater at Lapwai, then back up the Potlatch River to Kendrick, over to Moscow, and then across the Palouse to Spokane.  Being a Saturday, I didn’t see any trains running this day, but I did observe the route of the UP branch to Cascade, and speculated how that line could have connected to the Camas Prairie RR to form a direct Spokane to Boise rail link.  I don’t think it could really have worked, but it was fun to think about.  Also, driving from Lewiston to Moscow through Juliaetta and Kendrick let me see the embargoed P&L line before it was pulled up.  At Colfax, I managed to photograph a pair of UP (ex-WP) locomotives idling with a former MoPac caboose.  Although it was possible the crew was eating lunch somewhere and that if I waited longer, they  may have returned to complete their run to Spokane.  But it had already been a long, eventful day, and I was ready to go home and get some rest!

UP in Colfax

The next morning, I had to explain to Mom and Dad my financial predicament.  They advanced me $75, and on Monday, I drove over to Coeur d’Alene to the nearest branch of Zion’s Bank to see if I could cover my “bad” check.  Although the teller there couldn’t place the funds into my account directly (we still hadn’t figured out true interstate banking by then), she did forward them to ZB in Utah right away, and somehow flagged my account to let it know the funds were on the way.  Either way, it must have worked, because I never heard any more about it.

Paradise Paved

This is from an editorial piece I wrote in November, 2009, in my capacity as editor of "White Pine Route Quarterly" a publication of the Washington, Idaho & Montana Ry. History Preservation Group.

“They paved paradise, and put in a parking lot.”  These lyrics from the classic Joni Mitchell tune “Big Yellow Taxi” came to mind as I drove home from a mid-September railfan excursion to North Idaho.  For railroad enthusiasts, this sentiment usually applies when a favorite rail line has been abandoned.  Of course, railroad abandonment has been going on nationwide over the last half century, so you’d think we’d have gotten used to it by now.  Hardly.



Paradise Paved Over - Former Milwaukee Road Elk River Branch near Bovill, ID

The cover story for my trip to North Idaho was to meet with Don Somers and discuss some HPG business.  Our real motive, however, was to photograph the log trains that the St. Maries River RR has operated for many years between the log yard at Clarkia, ID and the Potlatch Corp. mill at St. Maries.  The STMA’s log traffic on this northern remnant of the former Milwaukee Road Elk River Branch represented the last vestige of common carrier railroad logging in North Idaho, if not in the entire nation.

I’d heard rumors that this traffic might end soon, possibly late this year, so Don and I hoped to see a train on that line before it was too late.  But, even before I left home, we learned it was already too late.  A news report, and corroboration from local STMA fans, indicated that Potlatch Corp. closed the Clarkia log yard on August 25^th.  The mill remains open, but logs are now delivered directly from the harvesting areas by truck.  The STMA continues to run trains of finished lumber 2-3 days a week from St. Maries to the UP interchange at Plummer Jct., but there will be no more “road trains” south to Clarkia.  Ever, according to STMA management.

Despite this bad news, I went anyway, and together with Don and Jack Coyner, drove the length of the Clarkia branch to see what was left to see.  Not much.  We did see evidence of a “cleanup” train that ran earlier in the week, and I understand that the final cleanup train ran the week after our trip.  Bad timing all around on our part!  We understand that the tracks between Clarkia and Bovill will soon be removed completely, while the future of the rest of the line looks pretty bleak.

Fortunately, this trip was not all doom and gloom.  One item that caught my attention was that the former WI&M depot site at Palouse, WA has been made over into an RV park.  Under different circumstances, this could also be a big disappointment.  However, the depot has been gone for many years, and only a patch of weeds has occupied the space since then, so an RV park is quite an improvement.  If I ever own an RV, I will certainly reserve a site right on top of the actual depot location when I visit Palouse.

Another positive point I took home from my trip is that I was able to photograph trains from four different railroads still serving the region:  a Palouse River & Coulee City RR train parked on the ex-UP line at Hooper, WA; a W&I RR train parked at Palouse (Both the W&I and PCC are currently running trains at night due to daytime track maintenance. Both will likely resume normal hours when winter sets in.); a STMA switch engine at St. Maries assembling the next day’s train to Plummer Jct.; and a UP train switching the Stimson mill and STMA interchange at Plummer before heading north to Spokane.  Railroading in the Palouse may not be what it once was, but it ain’t dead yet!




Palouse River & Coulee City RR train parked on the ex-UP line at Hooper, ID

Washtinton & Idaho RR train parked at Palouse, WA



STMA crew assembling the next day’s train at St. Maries, ID

Not all doom and gloom:  Union Pacific at Plummer Jct, ID

Thinking about the Clarkia line again, I did see a train on those tracks once, back in 1996.  It was my first visit to the area after several years living in Michigan, and I was intent on reacquainting myself with the WI&M.  While following Highway 3 south toward Bovill, I saw the headlight of a northbound STMA train approaching Fernwood.  I stopped for a moment, shot a short video of the passing train, and then drove back to the Fernwood depot to photograph the train as it rumbled past.  Then, stupidly, I continued south on the highway toward Bovill, even though I knew there were no trains running there.  I can still hear the voice in my head telling me that it would be OK to let this one go; I could always come back and chase another of these log trains on a later trip.

 

Fernwood, ID, June 1996:  Northbound Clarkia Logger



Logs by Rail, a Rare Sight Anywhere But North Idaho



Two Anachronisms in 1996 - a Caboose and a Railroad Depot

This is where Joni Mitchell chimes in again, “. . . you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone . . .”

The Sinto Ave. Spur

The Sinto Ave. industrial spur in Spokane was always interesting to me, especially because it was
so close to home and every once in a while I might see a train working the spur.  I seem to
remember a BN switcher crossing Ash St. on the way home from church one Sunday, but the
few other trains I saw were UP. 



The Sinto Spur is visible on this map as a rail line angling toward the northwest, passing south of the old Spokane Coliseum, and then following the east-west alignment of Sinto Avenue before turning northwest again just past A. M. Cannon Park.

One Saturday, probably around ‘78 or ‘79, I convinced a friend to hike with me along the tracks, so I could look at the different freight cars and write down their reporting marks.  In the end, my list of spotted freight cars was about 11 or 12 entries long, so the spur was still pretty busy even at that late date.  I lost the list a long time ago, but I seem to remember a couple UP boxcars spotted at various locations on the spur and a Santa Fe refrigerator car in the Washington St. yard.  Industries I remember along that line included Empire Cold Storage, a fuel dealer, a lumber yard (plus the old lumber mill west of Cannon Park that burned), Western Soap and a couple others where the building is still standing, but I don’t remember what they shipped or received.

When I started riding my bike to Havermale Jr. High, I would sometimes ride along the tracks as far as Cedar St., but had to stop because I kept having thorns puncture my bike tires.  One morning as I walked to school along the tracks – I know I was in 8^th grade, so this must’ve been the Fall of ‘79 or Spring of ’80 – I looked up and saw a UP GP-38-2 coming up the spur to work.  I couldn’t help stopping to watch them drop off and pick up cars (it didn’t take too long, so maybe only one or two cars got handled), and I stuck around until they were done, even though I was already late for school by then.  I did ask the crew for a ride as far as Cedar, but they turned me down.  Still, I was pretty thrilled at having been in the right place and right time to see a train working on the spur.

When I got to school, I went straight to the office to accept whatever punishment was in store for being tardy.  My 1^st Period English teacher (I think her name was Mrs. Elias) happened to be in the office, so she asked me where I’d been.  When I told her about the train, she rolled her eyes and told me to get into class.  There was no tardy slip, and I never heard a thing about it from the school.  Mom found out, and so did Grandpa Brady, either because the school had called her or because I just had to tell her about my cool experience.  Grandpa scolded me a little about school being a higher priority than trains, but I would probably have done it again.  I think I’ve kept my priorities pretty straight over the years, and I've learned that if you generally keep your nose clean, you’re less likely to get in trouble when you do step out of bounds a little.




This is the locomotive in which I got my first cab ride.  Unfortunately, this photo was not taken on the Sinto Ave. Spur, but in Blackfoot, Idaho instead, by Norm Metcalf

One other time, in the Fall of ’80, I got my first cab ride on that spur.  My Scout troop was camping up at Bear Lake as part of a district Camporee, but I had a Saturday AM piano recital.  I camped with the troop overnight, and then Mom & Dad picked me up the next morning.  I came into town, performed in my recital, and then we went home to pick something up before they took me back to camp so I could come home with my troop.  As we were driving north up Maple St., I saw a UP locomotive on the spur.  Dad drove around the block so I could get a closer look.  The engine was stopped just east of Ash as they prepared to move.  I got out of the car to watch, and asked about a cab ride, just as far as Maple (1 block).  They asked if I really meant only one block, then invited me up into the cab.  I sat in the fireman’s seat while they moved to flag for their crossing at Maple, and I climbed right back down – again, pretty thrilled by the experience.  I think three things helped me score the ride this time, I only wanted to ride for a block, my parents were right there watching, and I had a Scout shirt on.

The final time I saw a train on the spur before it was abandoned, was on a Saturday probably in the Fall of ‘83, I think.  My sister and I had been to a North Central H.S. International Club picnic on Mt. Spokane and had returned to the school parking lot to drop off friends that had driven up with us.  On our way home, I saw a train on the spur, pulled by a Western Pacific GP-40 that was assigned to Spokane for a while after the UP/WP merger.  This was cool, because I had Dad’s camera with me!  I took several shots as the train rolled east along the spur.  But, when I got home, I found there had been no film in the camera!

Two Hours at Cheney

As odd as it may sound, my “career” as a railfan began when I performed in a junior high school music competition.

I had purchased my first train set two years earlier, and had been spending time at local hobby shops to learn more about model trains and their real-life counterparts.  As I browsed through the magazine racks, I began thinking that maybe I could start taking my own pictures of trains.

I often saw trains running through my hometown of Spokane, Washington, but I had never gotten close enough for a good photo.  My chance came in February, 1980 when my 8th-grade orchestra teacher signed me up to play with a string quartet in a music competition hosted by Eastern Washington University in nearby Cheney.  I was also taking private piano lessons, and learned that my piano teacher had scheduled me to play a piece in a later portion of the same competition.

When I realized I would have a three hour break between sessions, I wondered what to do during the wait.  I remembered that I had seen Burlington Northern trains running through Cheney a few times in the past.  Maybe three hours would be long enough to walk down to the tracks and hopefully see a train or two?

"I had seen Burlington Northern trains running through Cheney a few times in the past"

As soon as my quartet had finished playing on the day of the competition, I slipped on my coat and hat, checked to make sure my Kodak 126 Instamatic was still in my pocket, and took off.  I walked several blocks before I came to Cheney’s main street.  One block further south and I reached the Cheney depot.

"One block further south and I reached the Cheney depot."

I recognized the red-and-black “monad” symbol that still adorned the station – I had seen it before on old Northern Pacific boxcars – but the windows of the Spanish-style depot looked dark.  I wasn’t sure this was someplace I was supposed to be, but before I had a chance to reconsider, a door opened and a voice called out to me, “So, do you like trains?”

 

The station agent stepped outside and looked at my hat as he walked over to me.  A few months before, I had purchased a Great Northern “Big Sky Blue” patch (it matched one of my HO locomotives) and asked my mom to sew it on my hat.  I imagine now that the agent was probably an NP man, and may still have held a grudge against his railroad’s former competitor, but he simply commented, “Yeah, that was a pretty good railroad, too.”

 

I don’t remember if he asked me more questions, but I do remember him inviting me inside the station.  He showed me his office and gave me a quick rundown of the fixtures.  Some sort of teletype printer sat over in the corner.  A couple of telephones occupied his desk, which filled the operator’s bay and faced the mainline.  Right above the desktop two levers protruded through the outer wall of the bay to control the order boards.

When the phone suddenly rang, I stepped back and tried to make myself small.  The agent answered the phone, listened for a minute, then began repeating information back to someone on the other end of the line and copying it down on a small pad of papers.  My ignorance of railroading kept me from fully understanding what was going on, but it was clear from his actions that a train was on its way.  He finished making his notations, and then explained that these were orders for him to hand to the train crew as they passed.

He set one of the order board levers to slow the train, then stepped onto the platform and proceeded to tie two slips of paper to the order stands, one between the upper forks and one between the lower set.  Sure enough, a headlight appeared around a curve to the east, and before I knew it, the train was upon us.  The agent stood back to ensure the head end and caboose crews grabbed their orders.  I know now that he was also giving them a “roll by” inspection, but all I saw was a blur of red CB&Q, brown NP and green GN boxcars speeding past.

"all I saw was a blur of red CB&Q, brown NP and green GN boxcars speeding past"

During my visit, two more trains appeared.  First, a local train, powered by two geeps and an F-7B, pulled onto a track behind the depot and proceeded to switch the large flour mill that stood a short distance away.  Meanwhile, a long freight stopped in front of the station for a few minutes to cut a pair of locomotives off of the head end before proceeding west.  The agent explained that westward trains leaving Spokane faced a stiff grade, and that these helper engines added the necessary horsepower to keep heavy trains moving.  Of course, I took several pictures of each train as it passed, or paused at, the depot.




"First, a local train . . . pulled onto a track behind the depot"

 

Wandering back inside, my heart nearly skipped a beat when the agent suggested to the helper engineer that he give me a tour of his cab.  The hogger and I walked over to the two engines on the siding, and he helped me climb the steps into the cab of GP-9 #1851.  Although he couldn’t offer me a ride, he made sure I knew the purpose of all the cab controls, and even stepped down from the engine for a moment to snap my picture in the cab.




I just hope the engineer's hand was steadier on the throttle than it was with my camera

Two hours passed before I knew it.  Then it was time for me to hurry back to the music building on campus.  Although I earned a “superior” rating for my piano performance, it sure wasn’t because I was thinking very hard about music that afternoon.

A week or so later, I got my developed photos back.  They were fun to look at, and they became the first of several thousand railroad photos now in my collection.  But, when I look at these same prints today, I realize that they are the only record I have of a brand of railroading that long ago passed into history.

As it turned out, that two-hour visit was my first, last, and only opportunity to observe the use of order boards, Form 19 orders being passed up to a moving train, and helper locomotives running between Spokane and Cheney.  The photos I took that day are my only personal proof that railroads really used 40’ boxcars to haul wheat, and that dinosaurs like GE U-25-C’s and EMD B-units actually roamed the rails before surrendering to a swarm of SD-40-2’s.

More importantly, that was my first encounter with real railroaders – the kind that encouraged boys to learn about railroads instead of chasing them off the property.  I don’t remember if I thanked the agent and the engineer properly, but I certainly remember, and am grateful for, their generosity in spending time with me that day.  Over the years, I’ve met other railroaders like them, but the traditions of railroading those men demonstrated that chilly day in Cheney are long gone.

An entire generation of railroading breathed its last in the viewfinder of my little Kodak during those two hours.  The photos may be blurry, but the images in my mind are as clear as if it were yesterday.