ALCO FAs on the BN

The Spokane, Portland and Seattle seems to be the forgotten child of two mammoth parents, but despite its lack of notoriety it still has a very colorful past in Washington. And they loved ALCOs. Kevin Piper shot the above photo in June 1971 while visiting Vancouver with his grandfather. He described the trip like this:

"My grandfather had a thing about Alco FA's. He also had several "Lionel" ones. We went looking for BN FA's still in service on that trip in June '71, but only found one (the one in the photo you mentioned) and it was in dead storage. My grandpa hated Cascade Green, so we ignored all the green stuff we saw. (I secretly liked it though.) Oh well."

You can see the rest of Kevin's great archive shots HERE!

Tacoma rail project to get federal money

Federal funding came through for the Point Defiance Bypass project scheduled to bring commuter service to Lakewood (not to be confused with the "Lakewood" neighborhood near Smokey Point). To add a side note, the City of Lakewood refuses to pay for security at the new Lakewood Transit Center opened by Sound Transit, because the trains aren't there yet.

Sound Transit is taking it in stride and paying for the security themselves...

Happy Birthday WARail!

We've successfully passed the first anniversary of the first post on WARail (9/18/08). Due to family matters, and a generally busy environment at my day job, I missed the date entirely myself!

We've had a great year and found that Washington houses a lot of rail news, sites and sounds. One thing I've noticed is that more photos from Washington are posted on sites like RailPictures.net or RRPictureArchives than in 2007.

Thanks to all the blog readers and commentators for visiting WARail today and for the past year!

Negotiations Begin for Eastside Freight Service

Port of Seattle is beginning negotiations with GNP and Ballard Terminal Railroad to provide freight service on the Woodinville Subdivision. Freight Service is expected to continue in the north end of the line, between Snohomish and Woodinville, because the southern link is currently severed south of the Wilburton Trestle.

The opportunities for freight service on the line south of Woodinville are kind of scarce at this time anyway.