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nwhikerEdit: this was written last night, but the photos didn't finish uploading until this morning.
We had an awesome day today!
In this post I will freely admit to breaking the law. We trespassed on railroad property, which is at the very least a misdemeanor . And took photos and videos to prove it. I may decide to make this post totally private later. BTW, we were Not Alone. There were railfans everywhere. Seeing a steam locomotive is pretty damn special and seeing it on this route, which is a historic one, even more so.
The locomotive was leaving Tacoma, and going from there to Easton. Easton is on Interstate 90, and the rail line is very rarely visible from the freeway. We pretty much knew there was going to be backcountry driving. Dh has been preparing for the trip for a few days, getting routes set up and planned, printing out maps, since our phones, out there? Bzzzzt! We also made a quick recon trip the other day on the way back from hiking near Yakima.
The big unknown? Snow. Would Stampede Pass be open? The latest data we had said the road was still snowed in. We had several "alternates" but none would be as cool as the place we wanted to go.
Let's see.... We got the car ready for an expedition! Hiking gear, extra water, picnic stuff, and headed out on I90. The goal was to get to Stampede, one of the places on the route of the 4449 which was supposed to have good viewing.
Off the freeway, and the road heads upwards and into the mountains. We quickly, as expected, lose cell coverage. We get to the place we need to park for the hike to Stampede. The road is gated, so yeah, no driving. Dh and the two olders head straight out while I help Linnea get her hiking boots on. That extra five minutes will prove to be critical.
The road headed straight up, and then straight down. A check after showed it to be about 1 mile total, which isn't much, even at that altitude.
Then I heard the train. It's far away, but I could hear it. A quick check off the ridge shows that I could see it too. Linnea and I took off at a trot. Train was getting closer. I found a stop one switchback from the track from where I could actually see the track, though not very well, and Linnea and I waited there. And waited. I could still hear the chug-chug-chug of the train. Then I couldn't, and I figured it had gone behind a ridge or into a tunnel. So I looked at Linnea and said "we need to run!" And run we did down the road.
Can I just say that I hate running? Blech.
But we got down there on time, managed to cross the tracks long before the train showed up, and dh got some pretty incredible footage.
Back to the car (back UP the road, where we found the gate OPEN. Turns out it hadn't been locked, not that we would have opened it anyhow. That's waaaay too much law breaking for us!), and we headed out to Easton, a small town off of I90.
There wasn't lots of parking, and we waited a car pulled out. We had our signal on, and we kept the road clear... only to have some asshole Republican (bumper stickers), steal our spot. We were not happy. We did find parking not too far.
The train was waiting -posing if you ask me- and people were milling around. The sheriff was there, BNSF police, lots of people. Dh met someone from the railway museum he volunteers at.
Linnea found... a stake. I swear it looked exactly like a stake-for-a-vampire, and she carried it around. I swore to her that a) there were no vamps in Easton, and b) certainly not at noon on a sunny day, but she insisted on keeping the damn thing handy.
Dh used wood pieces to explain to the kids how the Y works to do the run-around to turn the train around.
We watched as the train came back, and headed back out towards where we'd been earlier, taking the same Forest Service Road, and we headed to a different view point. We had to wait longer this time, almost an hour and half, and the wait was long for little people, though to their credit, they were extremely well behaved -there were other people there-, polite, and not whiny. I mean.... 90 minute wait for 15 seconds of train.
So the train came and went, and we decided to head toward the end of the FS Road. The theory was that we could drive to the gate and then walk the rest of the way to Lester.
What is Lester? A ghost town. It was a small settlement (one store, and four or five houses) way back when, and its last resident died in 2002, and she'd been living alone there, in the freaking middle of nowhere, for a long time.
It isn't quite the middle of nowhere, since there is railroad work happening, especially now, but at the time, those tracks were pretty much not used.
Anyhow, the road followed what I think is the Green River. It was flat and wide, and there were deer everywhere, and they pretty much ignored us. The vistas were beautiful.
The estimates of distances between the gate and Lester varied between 1/4 miles and 1.5 miles. It was closer to 2.5 miles. The kids were getting a bit tired -Linnea especially- but were such good fun. They didn't whine at all, didn't really complain, and it was such a contrast with the hike we did near Yakima a few weeks back when they whined and complained and squabbled!
Anyhow, we got to Lester, and if you didn't know it was a ghost town.... This would prove it, right? Heh.
Lester WA. It was rather sad, a relic.
Then we headed back to the car, the kids running ahead at the promise of fruit and rhubarb cake. Home and we watched the videos, and started uploading.
It was a spectacularly good day.
We had an awesome day today!
In this post I will freely admit to breaking the law. We trespassed on railroad property, which is at the very least a misdemeanor . And took photos and videos to prove it. I may decide to make this post totally private later. BTW, we were Not Alone. There were railfans everywhere. Seeing a steam locomotive is pretty damn special and seeing it on this route, which is a historic one, even more so.
The locomotive was leaving Tacoma, and going from there to Easton. Easton is on Interstate 90, and the rail line is very rarely visible from the freeway. We pretty much knew there was going to be backcountry driving. Dh has been preparing for the trip for a few days, getting routes set up and planned, printing out maps, since our phones, out there? Bzzzzt! We also made a quick recon trip the other day on the way back from hiking near Yakima.
The big unknown? Snow. Would Stampede Pass be open? The latest data we had said the road was still snowed in. We had several "alternates" but none would be as cool as the place we wanted to go.
Let's see.... We got the car ready for an expedition! Hiking gear, extra water, picnic stuff, and headed out on I90. The goal was to get to Stampede, one of the places on the route of the 4449 which was supposed to have good viewing.
Off the freeway, and the road heads upwards and into the mountains. We quickly, as expected, lose cell coverage. We get to the place we need to park for the hike to Stampede. The road is gated, so yeah, no driving. Dh and the two olders head straight out while I help Linnea get her hiking boots on. That extra five minutes will prove to be critical.
The road headed straight up, and then straight down. A check after showed it to be about 1 mile total, which isn't much, even at that altitude.
Then I heard the train. It's far away, but I could hear it. A quick check off the ridge shows that I could see it too. Linnea and I took off at a trot. Train was getting closer. I found a stop one switchback from the track from where I could actually see the track, though not very well, and Linnea and I waited there. And waited. I could still hear the chug-chug-chug of the train. Then I couldn't, and I figured it had gone behind a ridge or into a tunnel. So I looked at Linnea and said "we need to run!" And run we did down the road.
Can I just say that I hate running? Blech.
But we got down there on time, managed to cross the tracks long before the train showed up, and dh got some pretty incredible footage.
Back to the car (back UP the road, where we found the gate OPEN. Turns out it hadn't been locked, not that we would have opened it anyhow. That's waaaay too much law breaking for us!), and we headed out to Easton, a small town off of I90.
There wasn't lots of parking, and we waited a car pulled out. We had our signal on, and we kept the road clear... only to have some asshole Republican (bumper stickers), steal our spot. We were not happy. We did find parking not too far.
The train was waiting -posing if you ask me- and people were milling around. The sheriff was there, BNSF police, lots of people. Dh met someone from the railway museum he volunteers at.
Linnea found... a stake. I swear it looked exactly like a stake-for-a-vampire, and she carried it around. I swore to her that a) there were no vamps in Easton, and b) certainly not at noon on a sunny day, but she insisted on keeping the damn thing handy.
Dh used wood pieces to explain to the kids how the Y works to do the run-around to turn the train around.
We watched as the train came back, and headed back out towards where we'd been earlier, taking the same Forest Service Road, and we headed to a different view point. We had to wait longer this time, almost an hour and half, and the wait was long for little people, though to their credit, they were extremely well behaved -there were other people there-, polite, and not whiny. I mean.... 90 minute wait for 15 seconds of train.
So the train came and went, and we decided to head toward the end of the FS Road. The theory was that we could drive to the gate and then walk the rest of the way to Lester.
What is Lester? A ghost town. It was a small settlement (one store, and four or five houses) way back when, and its last resident died in 2002, and she'd been living alone there, in the freaking middle of nowhere, for a long time.
It isn't quite the middle of nowhere, since there is railroad work happening, especially now, but at the time, those tracks were pretty much not used.
Anyhow, the road followed what I think is the Green River. It was flat and wide, and there were deer everywhere, and they pretty much ignored us. The vistas were beautiful.
The estimates of distances between the gate and Lester varied between 1/4 miles and 1.5 miles. It was closer to 2.5 miles. The kids were getting a bit tired -Linnea especially- but were such good fun. They didn't whine at all, didn't really complain, and it was such a contrast with the hike we did near Yakima a few weeks back when they whined and complained and squabbled!
Anyhow, we got to Lester, and if you didn't know it was a ghost town.... This would prove it, right? Heh.
Lester WA. It was rather sad, a relic.
Then we headed back to the car, the kids running ahead at the promise of fruit and rhubarb cake. Home and we watched the videos, and started uploading.
It was a spectacularly good day.
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no subject
Date: 26 Jun 2011 17:01 (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 Jun 2011 03:09 (UTC)no subject
Date: 30 Jun 2011 19:18 (UTC)Also, the train cars were different in the two videos. Is that what you were trying to tell us with the Y sticks?
And how come there was a steam locomotive doing this route on this particular day? Some of those cars said California Zephyr and other things I couldn't capture. is it a regular run, but this time they had the added bonus of the steam locomotive, or was the entire run a special event?
no subject
Date: 2 Jul 2011 05:15 (UTC)Same train! They just ran the power around to the other end for the return trip. So the baggage car that was the last car on the way up was the first one on the way down.
Steam hasn't been seen on Stampede Pass for many years! This run was a special fundraiser for the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation (http://www.orhf.org), whose mission it is to "secure a permanent home for the City of Portland's steam locomotives" of which SP 4449 is one.
The train set was special too. If I remember, most of the dome cars are privately owned. And there were a couple of historic Amtrak coaches as well.
BNSF reopened Stampede Pass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZM8PCvZWu0) recently after it was mothballed for quite a few years. The idea was that increased container traffic from the Port of Seattle would make the route profitable to operate again. Of course, the economy went in the tank and the newly refurbished line only sees occasional traffic. Still, it's a beautiful route through rugged terrain.