Under Jackson Street - Then and Now

Bikers call it "A Cage." I call it my truck, and to date it has whisked me and my sons to great railroading venues around the region. It's reliable, somewhat fuel-efficient (compare to my big block powered `59 Chevy anyway), and navigates easily around the area. But it's a cage. It's a cage to me because - at 30mph or more - I miss much of what is going on around the streets I drive. There's nothing like walking the same route I've driven, and seeing 10 times more simply because my speed is roughly 3mph instead of 30. For me, walking around downtown Seattle has opened up so much of the city's railroading history that it was simply astounding. During my stint of jury duty downtown, I focused my lunch break attention on King Street Station and the surrounding tracks/roads. I go away with a great understanding of the railroad through this area and its impact on the blocks just south of downtown.

The first picture in today's Then and Now segment was taken in 1948 of Great Northern 1450 on the GN mainline as it is passing underneath Jackson Street. UP's Union Station is situated behind the locomotive, which was shared with the Milwaukee Road (lettering on the right side of the building). An electric trolley runs under wire along Jackson Street to the right. If you look closely in the expanded photo, you will see above the locomotive, standing on the street, a 40s era railfan watching the train...in the same exact spot that I watched several trains go by yesterday. A man on Jackson is also giving the steamer a passing glance.

Thanks to the Sound Transit train station along the mainline, citizens today are able to stand safely along the tracks underneath Jackson to watch trains, although legally I'm not able to take a photo from the same exact spot as the 1948 picture. There are chain link fences and BNSF signs that keep ethical people from breaking the law. Being an honest railfan means following the rules, even if it means you have to give up on the sweet photo op.

So for this installment I have the best possible alternatives - a picture of Union Station in the modern day, a picture of an SD40 passing under Jackson from the other direction, and a picture taken directly under Jackson. For perspective the second locomotive with the white face is in roughly the same spot as 1450 was in the first photo. Not surprisingly, the architecture of the overpass hasn't changed; it's pretty crumbly underneath, but if it was unsafe the City of Seattle would shut it down in no time. Standing near the tracks you can see the soot of railroading's decades applied to the ceiling along with passive graffiti on the pillars like "SP&S Dave."

In the 35 minutes that I hung around, two double-stack trains, one mixed freight, and a commuter train switching tracks all made movements along this stretch. Now that I have a better idea on how to use the bus around downtown, it's likely I'll be back to keep up on what's happening along this busy line!

BNSF 9218

This type of locomotive has always fascinated me. The white face, the unique cab design, and (noticing today) the strong exhaust note. This thing is a brute.

A much better picture of this EMD SD60M appears HERE. For good reason, the cab windows gave rise to its nickname of "Triclops." You will see SD60s with many styles of cabs; this one has what's called the "North American Safety Cab," which started use in Canada.

This picture was taken just north of Qwest Field, as the train enters King Street Station heading north towards the tunnel.

Seattle's Great Northern Tunnel

Another mobile moment. A second day of Jury Duty took me back to Seattle...and back to the trains. Built in 1904, the Great Northern Tunnel literally goes under the City of Seattle. The dig was so accurate that the two ends were said to be perfectly aligned when one team broke through to the other side in October 1904.

The mile-long tunnel is now heavily used and has two tracks running through the entire length. Typical traffic through the tunnel includes BNSF, Amtrak, and Sounder trains. The roof of the tunnel has been notched on the sides to allow for "Double-Stack" railcars to pass through, something that is still not possible with more famous tunnels like Stampede Pass.

A great place to watch movements is right along 4th Avenue between Washington and Main Street.

Mobile Moment - King Street Station

This week I've been on jury duty in downtown Seattle. Imagine my excitement when the bailiffs announce a two-hour lunch break; and here we are so close to tracks and trains! I skinned out the door and into the rainy Seattle streets to do what any railfan would do - eat my sandwich while looking for trains with my Treo 750/Camera Phone in hand. Sure, the quality of the photos taken by the Treo aren't up to snuff compared to even the most rudimentary 35mm SLR cameras, but frankly with some tweaking the photos end up looking better than those taken with a disposable. Sometimes you have to separate yourself from the desire to always be 100% and spot-on; I would have liked using my Olympus but the Treo does fine for what it is.

Closest venue for my Mobile Moment was our own King Street Station, recently sold to the City of Seattle by BNSF for the princely sum of one dollar. This will allow Seattle to get state and federal grants for renovation that were not available when it was privately held by the railroad. In any case, the station was potentially a great place for me to catch some trains and take some pix during my lunchtime - rather than sitting cooped up in the Jury Room.

Seattle Times wrote a great news story in 2005 about it; Trains magazine also wrote a sensational article recently about King Street Station, done in the style of a hard boiled detective novel from the 1940s - presumably because the wet weather and dark winters. It left me wanting more, because the article focused more on the way it was written rather than what it was written about. Much has been written about this station, so it's pointless for me to reinvent the wheel. But I can take pictures and poke around. The above view is pointed north towards the two-track tunnel that runs under the city to the waterfront. Below, the camer is pointed south toward the sports stadiums.

4th Avenue S runs on the left-hand side in the photo. In this part of the city, the railroad is literally underneath everything. On the other side of 4th Avenue is what's left of UP's Union Station, which has now been renovated into the headquarters for Sound Transit. The UP and Milwaukee Road ran out of Seattle's Union Station on a "stub track," which means the trains essentially backed up to the station and took on passengers. UP did not run on its own track north of here.

At this point, you might be thinking "doesn't this chowderhead take photos of actual trains?" Well, the best ones for last:

Amtrak 457 is an EMD F59PHI. On this day it was providing power for Amtrak Cascades, with the control car at the other end. Just before I took this photo a couple of homeless people walked across the tracks and then disappeared into the concrete maze on the other side. Some people just never learn about crossing tracks.

90230, for some reason, is called a "Cabbage Car." Essentially an "engineless engine," 90230 functions as a control car for Amtrak Cascades trains. Power is on the other end, usually in the form of an F59PHI like the one above but painted differently.

No BNSF trains came through at all while I was there, which was long enough to relax, eat, snap some pix, and even get close to Amtrak 457. But as I left and walked back towards 3rd and Yesler I could here the all-familiar howl of a BNSF horn coming up the track. Oh well...I should have stuck around another five minutes but who knew? That aside it was a great way to spend my lunchtime. I now know how to navigate around there on foot, so I should be able to take my boys along for the next tour of King Street Station!

Until next time, see you trackside...

Train Accident near Safeco Field

On Sunday October 1st at 9:30am my sons and I were near the BNSF crossing at South Holgate St, eating our McMuffins and waiting for trains to pass. It was an icky morning, described in our house as the type of "Splatty Rain" that seems to come at you from all directions and in all sizes. Fast food steams up the windows, especially when there are three hungry boys eating hot hashbrowns. We sat long enough for me to finish my food, electing to move the truck up closer to the crossing. When we got closer we saw lights, a bright trio on the tracks. Earlier, on our way into the area, we saw an Amtrak train sitting at King Street Station. This surely was the Coast Starlight or Cascades heading south. But the bright trio of lights didn't move. They just sat there.

"Daddy, can we go see what they're doing?" David asked me.

No, I said, because there's nowhere for us to park around there. So we headed off to find trains in another venue.

It's a good thing we didn't go there.

Turns out that a woman headed to work at Safeco Field was hit by a train while crossing the tracks, in her wheelchair. Thankfully no-one was killed, and as I write this the woman is in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center. The initial reports said that her chair got stuck on the tracks. Therefore the headlines look like:

"Train accident was fourth near ballpark since 2000"
"Woman in wheelchair hit by train in Seattle"

The headlines are true in the grammatical sense, but can mislead readers into thinking the whole thing happened a certain way. Headlines often use terminology that will tug at a person to read it. "Woman" and "wheelchair" are words high on the list. Actual blame cannot be found in a headline, but from the way it's written the blame can be assumed. In this case, the assumption from the headlines can be that the "big bad railroad" is at fault for hitting a disabled woman in a crossing. Ignore due diligence, choosing rather to skim over an article or merely read the headline, and the nuances of the issue can be lost. This article is a perfect case in point.

As the story unfolds an age-old issue comes out. Reports indicate that the woman went around the pedestrian crossing gate that had just dropped down. A witness said she had just cleared the crossing when the gate closed, and that the woman was heading into the crossing. A southbound train was doing 18mph and blew a warning (it's really loud there, because of all the tall buildings to bounce sound). Whether or not the chair got stuck on the track is unclear, as the police report indicates that the locomotive clipped the back of her chair rather than it actually being stuck; that would indicate the chair was moving and not stuck. The timing of her crossing still perplexes me; it seems that there was plenty of warning, both visible and audible, to keep this person away from the tracks. The Seattle Times article on this issue points out that railroad crossings are clearly dangerous places, chair or no chair, and that the utmost safety must be considered when crossing tracks - especially on a mainline that sees "100 movements" per day on average.

The most important thing to remember in all of this is to "always assume a train is coming." Pointing blame in this accident is not as important as simply learning to be safe around trains. "Stop, Look, and Listen" still runs through my head from a song I learned in Kindergarten. Back then the Northern Pacific ran through my town, so it was an important lesson that made me fear the dirt crossing when heading up the hill to a friend's house on the other side of the tracks. Even though we have no rails around our home now, I teach the boys about the importance of looking both ways and crossing tracks safely.

I'll tell them both, later in life, how close we were to seeing a visible example of that.

Interbay Yard - Then and Now

Welcome to Then and Now!

This post has two pictures, each taken from nearly the same spot but 35 years apart. The area is called Interbay Yard, which is on the BNSF mainline heading north out of downtown Seattle. In these two photos one can see the development change, but the depicted industry is more or less the same right down to the grit and grime on the outside of the loco.

The first photo was taken by Robert McDonald in May 1969, of Great Northern 425. Robert took a lot of photos back in the day. The pictures he has added to his blog Oil-Electric go back to 1958 and show historic views of our past up and down the West Coast - including British Columbia and Alaska. Thankfully for us train lovers, he took those picture with quality equipment depicting locomotives and scenery that are now only memories. His photographic record, and ability to describe each one in great detail, is a treasure to everyone who loves railroading history.

Robert calls GN 425 "absolutely dingy" because of the road grime over spectacular colors, Robert chose to shoot the picture anyway not realizing the impact it would have on a world of railfans when posted on the Internet in 2007. What he captured was a real-world vision of railroading in the late 1960s, dirt and all. We can appreciate this more than a posed photo of a clean unit.

The second photo was taken by yours truly in March 2004 of a worn-out Warbonnet with stenciled "BNSF" letters on the side. I shot the picture as the crew was leaving the unit and walking away. The photo is from the same vantage point of Robert's photograph - along the east side of Gilman Ave W. You'll see that my photo is slightly to the left of the spot that Robert snapped, but you can't miss the extensive additions of buildings both at the yard and on the streets behind the engine. In the original photo you can see Standard station, which is now the site of a bank. The roads behind the GN engine are now shrouded by two-story buildings serving small businesses and art galleries. None of this is visible in the final photo because of the erector set buildings put up on-site at the yard. But you get the idea. Lots has changed in 35 years. In this post-9/11 world this viewing area is an unsung spot for railfans, far enough from the trains for safety and close enough for pictures.

Open these photos each in a separate browser window, and then toggle back and forth between them. You'll see the development of 35 years right before your eyes. It's nice to know that I had Robert's archive to use as the "Then" photo for this series.