An Exceptional Year

In terms of my railroad photography, 2018 was an exceptional year! It wasn't a bad year either in other aspects of my life: my last child graduated high school, my other kids all took big strides toward full adulthood, I had a book published, and a bunch of other good things happened.

As for my rail photography, there are three basic reasons this year stood out: 1) I had several opportunities to travel outside my "natural range" and see for myself rail operations I had only read about before, 2) Whether by planning or by luck, I managed to be at the right place and time within my natural range to capture moments not seen before, and which may not occur again, and 3) maybe, after years of simply "pointing and shooting," I'm finally developing better photography strategies and skills!

In mostly chronological order, here are some of the photos that resulted:

During the first week of January, I traveled to Portland, Oregon to do research for my book. Having a little time to kill after I'd found what I was looking for and before catching a MAX train out to the airport, I lucked out that a matched set of Portland & Western "Geeps" hauled their train through the East Portland interlocking and into UP's Albina Yard.

Closer to home a week later, I happened to spot the Palouse River & Coulee City's "grain shuttle" train arriving at Wallula, Washington. I have seen the PCC's grain shuttle operations before, both on feeder branches in the western Palouse and on the UP mainline near Hooper, but this was my first time shooting the arriving train. Within a year, this operation would cease.

During an early spring visit to my son and daughter-in-law in Spokane, I spotted BNSF's inbound Chewelah Turn. Making a sharp turn of my own, I was able to line up this shot of the train s-curving across the Spokane River. The train itself teamed with the light green of the trees to offset the gray clouds and surroundings.  

Photographing BNSF's Byron Turn in Richland and Kennewick is not unusual for me. However, shooting the train pulled by an SD40-2 in the orange/green Heritage I scheme, rather than the usual orange/black "swoosh" painted GP28Ms, is a rare treat with no promise it will be repeated any further into the future. 

Shooting photos "against the sun" is seldom easy. Fortunately, the light on the distant flora contrasts with the shadowed nose of the oncoming BNSF SD70ACe on the former SP&S mainline approaching Cushman siding.

On another trip to Spokane, I traveled by way of Providence Hill along the former Northern Pacific mainline and caught a side-lit grain train as it rounded a curve near the crest of the grade.

I was in Spokane a lot during the spring and summer, and on another trip there, I got this "golden hour" shot of a BNSF westbound grain train at Tokio siding. This is a very popular photo location for other railfans, probably for this very reason.

Returning from the David Byrne concert in Seattle in May ("The best live show of all time."), I slept in my car at the top of Stampede Pass, and then worked my way down the Yakima from there. Near Bristol, downriver from Cle Elum, I shot this eastbound empty grain train.

Following the same train past Ellensburg, I also shot it here approaching Roza. I really liked the slightly purple tinge of the basalt cliffs.

Less than a month later, I drove my daughter and her friend over to attend a three-day ComicCon in downtown Seattle. While they were at the con, I naturally spent my time chasing trains. I even connected with a few friends from social media who shared locations and tips for good "hunting". Here, one of the new Siemens locomotives leads a Cascades train north into King Street Station.

A two-man UP crew works the industrial trackage along Seattle's Marginal Way, using a belt pack remote to operate GP38-2 631. It turned out when I posted this image to a Facebook group, the pictured crewman identified himself and I was able to send him a full resolution copy of this photo.

Another Seattle-area operation I've been wanting to see for myself for some time is the "Renton Rocket" which mostly operates to haul 737 fuselages to and from the Boeing plant in Renton. It was fun to witness the part where they run down the middle of Houser Way, but I was too close to the action for those photos to be very interesting. This one, however, turned out pretty well.

Less than a week later, I acted on a tip that a train would be running on the WI&M tracks east of Palouse WA and took a spur-of-the-moment overnight trip there. My wife was out of town for a couple weeks, so I could get away with it. The early-morning westbound train ran "against the sun" so I had to get creative with my photo angles. I thought this shot from the hillside above the Potlatch ID depot worked particularly well.

As the same train approached the end of its run to Palouse, I snapped this shot. I've photographed trains on Whitman St. several times before, but this image turned out the best of them all (so far, I hope).

On a mid-July return trip from Spokane, the sun was just beginning to set, allowing me to shoot westbounds in really good light. The partially collapsed fence and gates added some interest to the foreground. 

Here's that curve near Tokio again. I took this shot in color, and it was pretty good, but I liked it a lot better in black and white.

My "big trip" this summer, courtesy of my wife's employment in the airline industry, was flying out to Iowa in late July to spend a day photographing the last electric freight railroad in the U.S., the Iowa Traction Railroad in Mason City. In the early morning, just after the crew went to work, I took this shot of a single freight "motor" hauling a single empty tank car toward an interchange with Union Pacific's former Rock Island route through Mason City. If it weren't for the single minivan on the parallel highway, it would be difficult to tell this was taken in 2018, not 1928.

I don't think this photo has any particular artistic value, but it's hard to beat a well-lit shot of a 90-year-old locomotive still doing the job its builders intended on a daily basis.

No less than five separate steam railroads (i.e. separate from the electric interurban) once intersected Mason City. Today, that number is down to two, although only a few of the former routes have been removed; the rest are simply operated by different railroads now. Most exciting to me was seeing Canadian Pacific running on former Milwaukee Road tracks, with a heavily re-built "geep" leading a local train from a nearby scrapyard into the Mason City yard.

I also got to spend part of a day on my own in Denver in mid-August, and decided trains or no trains, I wanted to see the East Portal of Moffat Tunnel for myself. Getting out of downtown, I spotted the westbound California Zephyr making its station stop, so I had time to select and set up at a location of my choosing. Had I known how long I would be waiting, I'd have probably headed up higher into the mountains, but I settled for the crossing of Coal Creek Parkway. Once I snapped the shutter on this scene, I knew I hadn't "settled" for anything.

On my way back down from East Portal, I was also able to capture several shots, including this one at Tolland, of a westbound BNSF manifest climbing the grade. 

It usually doesn't take much to get a rail enthusiast excited. Back in the Tri Cities, UP had assigned  a slightly oddball locomotive to its local trains, one of only three GP40P-2s constructed for use on Southern Pacific commuter trains on the San Francisco peninsula. To most observers (and most likely to the train crews) it's no different than any one of hundreds of UP four-axle EMD locomotives, so I'll leave it to the viewer to look for the differences. Here the 1373 has just brought its train across the Columbia River for some local work in Kennewick and Richland.

Over on BNSF, the minor spotting features of a group of otherwise look-alike wide-cab diesels, got fans excited about former Santa Fe SD75Is. The clean "swoosh" scheme helped these capture their share of the attention on local trains in and around Pasco yard, including this inbound Connell Turn in mid-September.

SD40-2s on local freights also got me a lot more excited about them than when they pulled mainline freights in the 1980's.

I took a second trip east to the Palouse in early October for a couple events kicking off my new book release. Luckily, I also managed to be in Palouse (City) to witness the Washington & Idaho RR crew switching out well cars stored on a former S&IE spur.

The same crew then headed up the old WI&M shoving empty cars for Bennett Lumber, and dragging the well cars behind for storage on the Kennedy Ford siding. I don't find a locomotive sandwich very photogenic, but working the angles I found a few ways to shoot the train with the well cars hidden as much as possible by trees or rocks.

The tour de force of my year was a multi-day road trip I took to Montana in mid-October. An old railfan friend of mine was getting married at the Izaak Walton Inn near Glacier Park, giving me a chance to see him again, meet his teenage son, and even participate in the wedding ceremony itself. The day before the ceremony, the teenage son and I chased down the latest celebrity relic in the Treasure State: a former Milwaukee Road locomotive now owned by Watco and used on their Mission Mountain Railroad, seen here on tracks in Kalispell that may not be in service much longer.

While the blushing bride was getting ready for the ceremony, the groom and I re-lived our glory days by pacing the eastbound Empire Builder over the summit to East Glacier, and then shooting a few eastbound freights on our way back toward the inn. This shot turned out best, and I would have considered submitting it to BNSF for a calendar if it weren't for their policy of accepting shots only when the leading locomotive (at least) features the current paint scheme. (Also, I think they only accept photos from employees, ruling me out as well.)

The following morning, the rest of the wedding party hopped on the Builder for a return trip to their homes in Chicago. The weather had been perfect the previous two days, and with that trend appearing to continue, I chased their train back across the pass, resulting in near-perfect shots like this one near Bison . . .

...and this one at the Two-Medicine Bridge.

With the happy couple on their way, I finally got down to the business of Montana Rail Link. This scenic and operationally diverse railroad runs within 200 miles of my hometown, and yet it has never worked out for me to spend any real time checking it out. Not that I had lots of time this trip, but enough to chase this train, the eastbound Gas Local, from its origin at Thompson Falls back as far as Paradise. This was one of the better shots.

I took a favorite photo of a Burlington Northern freight crossing this bridge at Clark Fork, Idaho nearly 34 years earlier, and now it was time for me to shoot it again. This time, I shot an eastbound BNSF train from the opposite shore of the river from the earlier shot.

Did I mention that in addition to perfect weather on this trip, I also enjoyed near-perfect fall colors, for Montana, at least. I think the blue locomotives of MRL look better against a backdrop of orange and yellow trees, but the matching orange of BNSF diesels doesn't look half bad either.

In early November, I made a trip down to Lewiston, Idaho for a book signing event. Being a Saturday, there was very little rail activity going on, but I managed a shot of the Great Northwestern Railroad (a Watco outfit) switching crew working the west end of the former Camas Prairie Railroad yard. GP35 3523 was originally built for the Reading RR before coming to the Palouse River & Coulee City RR in about 1997. It now carries WAMX reporting marks, and is the last one in the Inland Northwest still wearing its Palouse River & Coulee City paint. 

In late November, I took another trip to Spokane and was able to shoot this westbound Canadian Pacific grain train on UP's Hinkle-Spokane-Eastport mainline a few miles west of Cheney. There's just a hint of frost on the grass. 

On a quick trip to Utah to fetch a child home from college for the holidays, I slipped out of my Brigham City hotel room early in the morning hoping to catch a low-light shot of any trains that might pass through. The local crew was in the yard putting a train together, and I waited at this spot hoping they would roll past me. They never got any farther out of the yard than this before I had to head back and meet up with the family for a day-long drive home. Still, the photo turned out pretty well with only the glow of the headlight shining out from behind the trees.

Back at home in the lull between Christmas and New Years, I managed to get out and shoot a few trains, despite less-than-ideal lighting conditions. One day, I was able to chase the Lowline Local between Pasco and Wallula, with a BN green SD60 leading past the station sign at Burbank

Another low-light shot, taken out of opportunity rather than by intent, was this westbound Washington Eastern RR train of grain empties approaching Medical Lake, WA. The WER is a new railroad operating on the state-owned line between Cheney and Coulee City, and their ex-Santa Fe GP30 looks great leading their trains.

Taken on the last day of 2018, I shot this westbound potash train snaking along the shore of the Columbia just downriver from Wallula.

To repeat myself, I think this is the best collection of photos I've ever taken within the arbitrary confines of a calendar year. I guess it wouldn't be wise to rest on my self-awarded laurel wreath, so I plan to get out trackside and see if I can say the same thing at the close of 2019.