A few years ago after a decent overnight snow fall the day started off bright and sunny. With an export coal called for 0700 I had hoped the sun would have enough time to clear the mountains. Well, not quite but the resulting photo still looked pretty impressive.

Tags:   alaska train railroad snow mountains alaska railroad

© All Rights Reserved

MRL ran a ballast extra to Pipestone and in doing so they traversed the very scenic Jefferson Canyon. The track the MRL train is on is former Northern Pacific while on the other side was the famed Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension. I wish I could have been here to bear witness to that experience.

Tags:   Cardwell Montana United States

© All Rights Reserved

After catching this train eastbound on the Lake Benewah Trestle we were able to get two more sots before they reached St. Maries and called it a day. One was this shot a couple of miles from the Potlatch plant. It seemed a fitting end to their trip.

Tags:   Saint Maries Idaho United States

© All Rights Reserved

As I usually do this time of year I leave Alaska for points south. This year I was concentrating on Eastern WA, ID & MT. High on my list was to get some good shots of the St. Maries railroad as my one previous visit was nothing but overcast skies. This time my results would be different although that didn't appear to be the case at first. I had talked to several folks and most said Mon-Tue-Thu were regular operating days. Based on our travel schedule we picked Thursday as that seemed to be the most reliable day to take the loads from St.. Maries to Plummer. We arrived Wednesday grabbed a room and headed down to the depot where we found the crew working and working and working. It appears in addition to lumber the railroad also stores quite a number of double stack cars for the UP. UP had requested some back and it took the crew longer than they had expected to dig them out so the run to Plummer was postponed until Friday. As you might guess we decided to stay until the next day and as it turns out we were rewarded for our patience. STMA Geeps 101-103 cross the large steel trestle east of the large Pee Dee Creek trestle as they bring empties back to town.

Tags:   Plummer Idaho United States

© All Rights Reserved

BNSF's Chewelah Turn crosses the Spokane River on the last leg of their round trip. The matched GP60Ms reflected in the clear Spokane River are certainly cool. Too bad there was an extra A-unit, nonetheless pretty cool consist in this day an age. In addition, this was a nice photo to cross off my bucket list. I wasn't sure the Geeps would last until I made it down from Alaska.

Tags:   Spokane Washington United States

© All Rights Reserved