Railroad picture of the day
It has been cold enough over the last few days so that it takes me until 2-3 in the afternoon to drag myself out of the house and out on the bicycle (it doesn’t help much that “the bicycle” is the midlifecrisismobile, which is still in the throes of being adjusted to fit) for my daily ramble around southeast Portland (or as much as I can fit before my fingers and toes freeze out from under me.) Today I didn’t get out until sometime after 2pm, which turned out to be convenient because I heard an Amtrak train whistling for the crossings at 11th and 12th (about 2 miles north of home) as I turned onto Bybee from 17th.
There are many things to be said against the Yellow Menace, but one good thing they’ve done is improve the ex-SP line through east Portland so that trains can run 40mph if they want to. And Amtrak wants to; I live about 1200 feet from the Bybee Ave bridge over 99e and the Yellow Menace mainline, but by the time I got down to the bridge the Coast Starlight had just reached the south end of what used to be Brooklyn Yard (it’s been converted to a TOFC reload facility) and was accelerating up to line speed on the line towards California. It was close, but I barely had time to lie the mlcm up against the railing of the bridge, pull out the mighty Pentax, and scamper across to the north side of the bridge for a picture or twenty as the train came zipping south towards me.