Thank God for Longer Days!!!

[funnelfan]

My hometown railroad, the Puget Sound & Pacific, is largely a nocturnal beast locally. I often hear the horns of the trains passing through during the night. This is largely due to the fact that the day crew at Centralia is in charge of building trains, preforming interchange, and switching some local customers. It's the job of the night shift to drag the cars out to Elma for the locals based there. So it a rare catch when you find the PSAP train to Elma passing through in day light. But as the days grow longer approaching the summer soltice, the odds of catching the night shift during daylight grow more favorable. Such was the case this afternoon. I met up with Robert Scott at Tenino, but after a few trains, the mainline action dried up. On the way home I passed over the rear of a very long post Memorial Day weekend PSAP train. I found out later from the conductor that the trailing unit which was smoking heavily, was also slipping badly. I nailed a few shots of the train in the late afternoon sun around Rochester and Gate. The train stalled coming into Gate, but eventually managed to crawl into town. There the crew needed to pick up several empty centerbeams and two tankcars off the siding (I joked with the conductor this wasn't helping their cause any). I gave the conductor a lift to help speed up the pickup and left them to their duties at Gate. By the time they put their train together the sun had set behind the hills and a marine layer of clouds moving in from the coast.

[Allan.]

Awesome photos Ted.

[pascobnsf]

I always liked the green/cream/yellow paint schemes from ParkSierra RailGroup. I grew up seeing the ARZC. Looking forward to more pictures of this rail line.

Richard
pascobnsf

[Leia]

I agree. Great color scheme. I have never seen this company before so a special thanks. And on top of that, it sounds like it was a great adventure.