Earth Day 2006 -- Go By Train

Earth Day 2006 – Go By Train

As part of the Portland Earth Day celebrations, Portland Traction put on some special trains to carry passengers from the Ochoco St shops over to the foot of the bluff that the Earth Day celebrations were being held on. The earthy-crunchy hook here was apparently that they'd filled the SW1500 with biodiesel (1202, as it turns out, is going to be assigned to the Canby branch of the vast Oregon Pacific railway empire; the new working Eng! is currently working out of Canby while the 1202 is having its break-in period here in Portland) even though it didn't have the traditional explosion in a deep fryer exhaust smell when we were riding the train.

It was a shockingly clear and sunny day today, and my Pentax was very very happy with the state of the world. I'd bought a new 1gb memory card this morning (340 images worth of lightly compressed jpegs) and by the time the return train got back to Milwaukie the thing was completely full.

The trains we rode on were pretty empty, so we got to ride in the cupola of the passenger car both ways. It was a terrific way to ride a part of Portland Traction that I had not ridden before (the furthest south I'd ever been before was down to Spokane street when we rode the 4449 from Spokane street to East Portland yard and back.)

This Space for Rent

Earth Day 2006 – Go By Train