The Secret of SODO

Most every railfan can understand the thrill of finding a perfect spot to watch trains do their thing. Seattle's SODO ("South Of Downtown") district is one such place that lies humbly due south of the Safeco and Qwest Fields. This mostly industrial heart of Seattle is usually known by the sports teams that play in the stadiums to the north, but SODO also harbors a secret that brings smiles to railfans young and old. Like trains? You'll find them here in a big way. There's a busy multi-track mainline running north/south through the center, commuter rail tracks running nearby, and a busy international switching yard for BNSF. Add some of the common regional cloud cover to the Seattle skyline to the north, and you have a railfanning experience that is unique to Washington.

Railfanning in an urban environment is a far cry from the leafy snowy scenes of many railfan photos we see on the Internet. But urban railfanning has its own character. It's gritty, showing trains in a true light because they themselves are gritty. Because of its closeness to our home, SODO is a favorite destination for me and my sons - day or night. Photo opportunities are everywhere. Parking is easy to find unless it's "Game Day." SODO is flat, so even walking or bicycling the area is easy. The trains run often enough that visitors are treated to at least one double-stack unit train, or if timed right the Amtrak Coast Starlight. There are "garbage trains," mixed freight trains, commuters, passenger trains, engines running without cars from one yard to another, and even scrap metal trains. Switching work along the mainline and in other areas occurs almost 24/7. If you don't see a train when you get there, find some coffee (Starbucks World HQ is in SODO, and has a store just to the north on 1st Ave) and wait another 1/2 hour. The variety will keep any camera happy.

Finding SODO is easy; take the 4th Avenue exit of either I-5 or I-90 and turn right (south). Once you cross Royal Brougham Way, you're there. The busy BNSF Mainline runs parallel with 4th Avenue S and 1st Avenue S down the length of the area before entering a large freight yard south of Spokane Street. It also runs - literally - underneath Safeco Field's eastern end, and provides another unique experience: federally mandated crossing blasts from trains during Mariners games. A few years back the media tried to get BNSF to stop blowing the horns during the All-Star game "because it would ruin the broadcast." They were laughed out of the meetings. Since then it has come to be an expected and welcome part of a Mariners game, much like the Green Monster is to Boston.

Four major streets in SODO cross the Mainline: Holgate, Lander, Horton, and Spokane. Holgate and Lander both offer close public parking that will allow a railfan to troll the area with a camera. In fact, there is a Krispy Kreme at the corner of 1st and Holgate within ear shot of the mainline. Horton is a true gritty industrial street; parking is minimal but walking the area can often find a hidden road switcher or two. Spokane Street runs underneath the Spokane St Viaduct towards West Seattle; parking areas there are more congested, and making a left turn anywhere near the viaduct is difficult unless you know the backroads.

The BNSF International Gateway Yard was once called "Stacy Yard" and named for a street that doesn't intersect with it; this is a bustling place filled with switchers, trucks, and railcars of all types. Once owned by the mighty Northern Pacific and used extensively by the Milwaukee Road, the yard is home to some of BNSF's big new orange loading cranes - seen easily from 1st Avenue S. One of the most interesting things I've seen there, parked right along Colorado Avenue, was a trio of locomotives from the Alaska Railroad awaiting their boat ride back to the North. They were close enough to touch (of course that wouldn't be a good idea). A drive down Colorado can look different every day; sometimes the yard is entirely clear while other days it's so full a person can't see anything from the road. On the north end of the yard (Atlantic Street), switch engines use a track that runs directly underneath the Alaskan Way Viaduct to move their cars around. Parking nearby allows you to get out and get close to the action. Guaranteed dry railfanning in the winter time, thanks to the viaduct!

So if you're looking for a different railfan experience that doesn't include trees (unless those trees are bare and strung with wires), SODO can offer some uncharacteristic sites and sounds. Getting the true feeling for what goes on there takes several trips, or one really long one. But once you visit, it's sure to be a secret you'll share with all of your friends!

Down at The Pencil Yard

Steve Carter shot this photo at the new Light Rail yard next to Alaskan Way in Seattle. I call it The Pencil Yard because of the tall dangerous looking poles that pepper the property. This shot was taken at night, which gives is an otherwordly lighting perspective.

Look for more of Steve's great pictures HERE.

The Milwaukee Road in Tekoa

This remains as one of my most favorite photos from The Milwaukee Road. Taken in the last days of the company's work in the Western US, the shot captures the essence of the MILW. Lonely. Quiet. Working hard despite scarce resources. Although The Road survived until the mid 1980s, my feeling is that the glory days were long over by the time Paul Greenfield snapped this photo outside of Tekoa WA in 1979.

His backstory about the photo makes it even more interesting:

"The shot itself was an exercise in patience," Paul writes. "Myself and another railfan, Art Riordan, waited near Rosalia for about three hours in the late afternoon. We watched as the sun got lower and lower. We finally heard the Milwaukee dispatcher talking to this guy and he indicated that he was on his way to Rosalia. We then chased him eastward for as long as the light held. Chased being a relative word since the track was in such bad shape slow orders had him down to 15 or 20 mph. If he hadn't been so late we wouldn't have had this shot. Somehow it summarizes the lonely Milwaukee Road traveling off into the sunset."

I totally agree with Paul on this one. Chance, along with a lot of patience, captured this moment for history, and for that I'm eternally thankful.

Make sure to check out Paul's other railroading photos HERE!

Palouse Sunset and a GP30M

This Mike Bjork photo combines two of my favorite things - a Palouse Sunset and an EMD GP30.

What are some of my other favorite things? Pie, lots of it. Cars that are older than me. Two cylinders, two tires and 50mpg.

Nice work Mike!

Yakima Under Wire - 1971

Drew Jacksich took this RailPictures.Net Photo of a GE B+B Electric with Yakima Valley Transportation in 1971. It's nice to see these photos from eras gone by. YVT is not well known, but was a subsidiary of Union Pacific (hence the colors) and abandoned by the railroad in 1985. A portion of the right-of-way still operates the Yakima Valley Trolley.

Great footage of the YVT can also be seen on a nicely priced video from Green Frog - Pacific Northwest Kaleidoscope. Check out more of Drew's photos HERE. Thanks Drew for a great picture!

Stranger in My Backyard

Spotted today along Airport Way South is a stranger from the East - Norfolk Southern 8985 - a GE C40-9W. Borrowed power? Run through? It's hard to say. My son calls these "Horse Trains" because of the logo on the nose.

Check out the dramatic cloud formations above the engines.

David and Big Engine

When possible, David and I head out on Sundays to visit the playground and take pictures of trains. Usually this trip will also include Krispy Kreme, as an incentive for David to join me. Yesterday the weather was great, albeit cold, for being out of the house and enjoying what January in Seattle has to offer. I would have never expected an up-close encounter with the BNSF...

After making our usual rounds through SODO, we headed down to prime photo opportunities along Airport Way South where the BNSF often stores their big diesels. The time was late afternoon, with low-horizon sun shining straight on the side of four engines sitting quiet. Since sunshine is unusual for our area, I took the opportunity to snap as many photos as I could with as many setting combos as possible on my Olympus digital. As an added bonus a GP28 ambled by on its way south. Photo ops were everywhere! After taking a few more I headed back to the truck, where David was taking photos of the GP28 through the window, to see how his pictures looked. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the GP28 was now headed back our way on another track. The conductor got out and threw the switch to put the old diesel on a siding and the engine rumbled down the line next to us. The conductor waved and walked over to the truck.

"How would like to take a look inside that big engine over there?" he said, pointing at BNSF 5490. While David was kind of shy about doing it, I grabbed this chance to say "YES!" and the three of us headed towards the engine.

Turns out the crew used BNSF 1521 - affectionately called "an old junker" by the Conductor - for getting down to the big line of engines, so they could turn them around for a return trip to Chicago. As we got closer we could see there was still snow on the front, plus an unexpected view of something bloody. "Looks like they hit a cow or something," said the conductor, pointing at the greyish hair and goo stuck to the hitch. David took a big step to get up on the nose of 5490; the Engineer said, "he looks like a railroad man already!"

Inside the engine, the conductor pointed at a big black button on the control stand. "Press that button," he said to David. 'HONK!! ...ding...ding...ding...ding...'

"Now press the yellow button there," he said. David did and the bell stopped.

The Conductor talked about what it took to run this big engine and how engines like these were all computerized now. He explained that they would be taking this line of four engines up to a Y in the track and turning it around. The crew would run this train from Seattle to Wenatchee, at which point another crew would take over. Was this engine always designated as the lead for this run, I asked? He said because this one was equipped with video equipment that it ran ahead of the others, which were not outfitted yet. I asked him if he made trips to Chicago.

"Used to do that, but now I just work in the yard. Money's better out on the road, but it's no life for a family man."

The view out of the cab was without equal; it also made my truck look like a Matchbox die cast. The GE C44-9w engines are truly big...bigger than anything out on the road according to the Conductor. We thanked the crew for their hospitality and took a few more pictures before we headed back to the truck. Eventually the Engineer got the fourth and third engines in the line fired up, and the big diesels ambled off to the north for a turnaround. We were able to pace them for a short while as we headed north ourselves.

David and I enjoyed this trip more than most, and for good reason!

Waitin' For The Boat, Part II

It would appear that the ARR engines that are in Seattle currently have been sold to make way for four brand new engines! Here's a short bit about it:

Alaska Railroad Picture of the Week

Waitin' for The Boat?

Alaska Railroad GP49s 2802 and 2809 are currently sitting at the BNSF Stacy Yard in Seattle. It's common to see power from the Last Frontier in the area, since many of their units have been rebuilt here. Why these ones are here, I'm just not sure.

But they sure make a great pair in the sunshine!

Roster Shot Shenanigans Part I

What do you do when a good shot is ruined by urban flair, like a power pole?

Well forget the Photo Of The Week award and do something with the snapshot anyway!

Photo editing courtesy of Tux Paint, which is an open-source kid-friendly art program. My son loves it, and I'll say that leaf stamp sure comes in handy here!

The Impossible Shot

If there were ever a picture that could benefit from editing, this would be the one. The edited photo is impossible, mostly because it doesn't exist in real life. Allow me to clarify.

When The Clark Boys and I set out on before church Sunday morning to get Egg McMuffins and take train pictures, I was hoping for a shot that I could post on WARail. We pulled off Holgate Street to investigate an older Geep sitting on a siding; as I had just taken my third picture of the engine and its two company cars, I turned around to the tell-tale sight of a high-powered headlamp and a couple of ditch lights. Perfect spot, I thought, as there were no buildings or abutments in the way of this shot and the Seattle cityscape was behind approaching train. I was thrilled! Several shots were taken, and the engineer even waved as they passed by with their load of piggy back trailers on flat cars. Everything seemed to be aligned to make this the shot.

Downloading from the camera told a different story.

In my efforts to capture the photo quickly, I didn't see what was right in front of me until I saw the photos on the computer. Once again the nemesis of old and young photogs alike - pesky electrical wires, reminder of an industrial society - ruined an otherwise fun photo. Everything else in the photo captured Seattle well. The colors in the buildings and sky, typical to the Pacific Northwest aesthetic, were greyish blue and filled with the demoralizing ambiance that has spawned many hard-rocking bands in and around Seattle. In the center, a bright orange freshly-washed GE on the point of a hard-pulling train. Exhaust smoke curled into the sky as a signal that this train was going places with horsepower to spare.

All topped off with a heaping dose of electrical wires crossing over everything.

So in the end I am now more thankful for the free "Wire Pilot" tool from the folks at Color Pilot. It pretty much saved the photo, as you can see below. You just move across the page and remove want you want gone. Will I try posting this to RailPictures.net? Heck no. First, I don't think the photo captures the true nature of the scenery, since the wires are actually there, even if I like the wireless photo more; it's an impossible shot, because in order to make it look good I had to fabricate what was in my head at the time I took the photo. Second, RP's focus tends to be photos beyond what Seattle has to offer most of the time: "Common Power" and grey skies. My difference of opinion on that subject is an argument I'll leave to anyone else familiar with RP's stringent policy of photo acceptance.

So for now I'll continue taking the shots that I see in my head, because now I've got the tools to actually show others what's going on in my brain!

Mobile Moment - The Local Scramble

Mike Bjork, our WARail fan on the street, is by his own definition "batty" over trains. Sometimes the lengths to which he goes for getting a shot are just plain crazy. But he's batty. He'll tell you so.

When asked about these shots, taken October 9th in Pullman WA, he offered up this reply:

"I like rambling stories and I have a lot of time on my hands. I'll make a good old guy when I get there. The short story behind that shot: I was bored after class and it was nice weather yesterday in town. I decided to take my camera to class and afterwards, go snap some shots of the wig-wag and some center beam flats that have been sitting in town. I've had to get creative w/ trains over here. Taking shots of the cars in the weeds, I hear a splattering horn that couldn't be anything but a train. After crapping myself in surprise, I booked it about 100 yards to the place to take that picture. She was slowly rolling town with another unit and some grain. Snapped a few pics, then ran about 1/3 of a mile across town to try to beat the train to another crossing. The engineer was nice enough to slow the train down so I could get in front of it. He probably took pity on me when he saw me running like a fool w/ my backpack. The train is the weekly local though Pullman, and in my 15 minutes down taking pictures, I was lucky enough to catch this rare train on one of the last nice days of the year."

Back in my day Pullman was where both Uncle Pete and BN both ran through town. Both railroads had tracks in front of my apartment, blowing their horns at all hours. Back then I didn't appreciate it as I would now. Those days are gone, and now Palouse River RR operates the largest regional railroad in Washington through the town. Grain is the primary shipment, as Pullman is in the Palouse Region known for bushel after bushel of wheat and lentils. Look for more from Mike, a fellow railfan and WSU Cougar. And remember...he's batty.

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...

Good Train, Bad Photo?

If you feel like most of the pictures you take of trains seem to lack that certain flair, don't feel alone; the world is built on photographers like you and me, who make our livings in careers other than photography. This means I need all the help I can get when it comes to getting photos to look good. Yes, I've had a camera in my hand since the mid 1970s; doesn't mean I'm good at it though. I continue to struggle with composition and adequate lighting, the latter being almost impossible to find in the Pacific Northwest. But nothing compares to the frustration one can feel when confronted by a photo they like which contains unwanted elements, namely overhead wires.

Wires can ruin an otherwise well-proportioned shot of anything. But what does a person do when it's just not okay to whip out the Stihl and saw the poles down? They get a copy of Wire Pilot for starters...that's what! The folks at Color Pilot offer Wire Pilot software to remove wires from digital photos. The site shows great shots marred by those pesky wires, and the demo shows just how easy it is to remove them. Best of all? Its free. Color Pilot does offer other software to buy, but this one costs nothing.

For years I've been skeptical of digital photo editing. It's hard being certain that something free could help salvage otherwise useless photos. But we know there's only one way to find out if Wire Pilot is worth anything, and that's to download and try it.

Well I'm convinced now that a lot of my photos can be saved by this software. I took the photo portrayed in this post (above is the original), and used Wire Pilot to see what it could do. I was impressed with the interface and the result. It's simple to use, doesn't take a lot of resources to operate, and ends up doing a darn nice job of removing wires! The most amazing this was that it was able to continue the look and feel of clouds that were behind the wires. I don't ask how it's done, but I sure appreciate what they created!

Major photo editing is one of those things that some people take issue with, because it's taking what's "real" and creating something that is "pseudo-real." I struggle with the ethics of it too, but have concluded that for my own use I'm all for taking advantage of digital tools to make the photo better. I draw the line at posting one of these heavily edited photos to an online database like Railpictures.net or RRPictureArchives.net. But for my own websites, or snapshots, I'm willing to work with a photo that otherwise would not be published.

Give it a try sometime, with one of your digital photos that needs help. It will be worth the effort!