This Space for Rent

Railroad picture(s) of the day

When I went out for a short loop this afternoon, I found myself crossing the Springwater bridge over the SPYellow Menace mainline at about 13:55, and, even though I didn’t want to cool my heels there waiting for the southbound Coast Starlight (departs Portland at 14:15) I could route myself southwards along the Yellow Menace mainline and catch the passenger train further south. It wasn’t even 14:00 when I reached uptown Milwaukie, so I proceeded southeast to Clackamas Towne Center & the I205 bike path (reaching the I205 overpass over the Yellow Menace at 14:20.) I stopped there to wait for the Amtrak train, but was surprised by a northbound Yellow Menace train instead.

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This northbound train on the single-track mainline meant that either (a) the southbound Coast Starlight had already gone by (not very likely; This is about 9 miles away from Union Station as the railroad flies, and that nine miles includes a slow creep across the Steel Bridge and through downtown East Portland) or (b) that the southbound Coast Starlight wouldn’t be showing up for another 25 minutes (the line only doubletracks south of Brooklyn Yard, which is 5 miles up the line; Amtrak runs at 60-70 mph through here, but freights move at a somewhat more deliberate pace up the hill to Milwaukie) and I could proceed down to Oregon City and take a picture of it there.

So I did. And I parked myself off the road halfway between the Oregon City railroad station and the Metro waste recycling plant, waited about 2 minutes, and was rewarded with the southbound train going as fast as it could towards downtown Oregon City:

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And when the train passed, I realized that it was getting close to 15:00, and that meant that if it was running on schedule I might be able to shoot the northbound Coast Starlight as it passed through Oregon City. So I proceeded down to Oregon City, parked myself by the side of the road, and waited around to see if anything interesting would show up on the trestle through downtown. And after about 5 minutes, I heard an Amtrak horn going *hoot!* *hooooooooot!* and the requested second passenger train zipped on by at line speed:

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It would have been a perfect trainspotting day if I’d seen a P&W train when I came back home (via West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Terwilliger to downtown Portland) but, alas, no other diesel trains were spotted on my way home.