greatcats
Engineer
I am out on a two + week road trip from Arizona, primarily to examine volcanoes, as I am a volunteer for the National Park Service at Sunset Crater near Flagstaff. I am also visiting several friends in Utah, Montana, Oregon, and Nevada. Yesterday I left my hosts' home on the west shore of Flathead Lake, Montana and wanted to follow the railroad west into Washington. I joined US 2 at Kalispell and headed west. I expected the railroad to join somewhere before Libby but this was not the case. It evidently follows a route through the wilderness only reached by secondary roads. I stopped for lunch at the Libby Cafe ( pretty good old fashioned place ) and before resuming driving headed down the street to Libby station, where trains only stop in the middle of the night. There is a fairly new concrete platform and the waiting room, not open at this time, did look cozy and inviting. One big demerit while peering through the window - a hand lettered sign advising that THE restroom was temporarily out of order. I wonder if that is always the case. Back on the road into the Idaho Panhandle - I really love this drive, and one reason I took it as it is not visible from the Empire Builder, which I took east last October. I have been in these parts before, but not in the town of Sandpoint. The station sits next to an elevated highway and is a bit tricky to reach, necessitating a reverse move through town, back over a bridge, and up a somewhat obscure driveway. However, the sight was encouraging of what I understand is the former Northern Pacific station. Contractors were at work on the forlorn looking building, and while the man shooed me away from his work area, due to ' insurance regulations running the world " he explained that part of the building was being renovated to create a handicapped accessible restroom and provide a waiting room. I tend to believe that this is a project of the city.
I decided to follow US 2 to Spokane, which wasn't so great, getting bogged down in traffic. The railroad following this route is evidently not used as the mainline, as it was unsignalled; it probably was the trackage heading south from the station in Sandpoint that is now the mainline. North of Spokane I passed several trailer parks where evidently there have been sever storms and saw more than a few trailers and RVs crushed by large trees.
I certainly saw more than one LONG LONG train of oil tankers headed east. What I found interesting was that a boxcar is placed behind the locomotives and ahead of the tankers, and also a boxcar on the rear of the otherwise all oil tanker train. My guess is that this is sort of a buffer in the event of a mishap from explosions. This is being written on the picnic table at the KOA Kamground in Pasco, where I spent a warm but fairly comfortable night in my tent. Shortly I will drive down the Columbia to have dinner with friends in Portland, following the north side of the river by the railroad. However, I'm not going to hang around to spot the late running 27.
I decided to follow US 2 to Spokane, which wasn't so great, getting bogged down in traffic. The railroad following this route is evidently not used as the mainline, as it was unsignalled; it probably was the trackage heading south from the station in Sandpoint that is now the mainline. North of Spokane I passed several trailer parks where evidently there have been sever storms and saw more than a few trailers and RVs crushed by large trees.
I certainly saw more than one LONG LONG train of oil tankers headed east. What I found interesting was that a boxcar is placed behind the locomotives and ahead of the tankers, and also a boxcar on the rear of the otherwise all oil tanker train. My guess is that this is sort of a buffer in the event of a mishap from explosions. This is being written on the picnic table at the KOA Kamground in Pasco, where I spent a warm but fairly comfortable night in my tent. Shortly I will drive down the Columbia to have dinner with friends in Portland, following the north side of the river by the railroad. However, I'm not going to hang around to spot the late running 27.
Yes, the area north of Spokane has been devastated by severe storms. They had two bad storms within 10 days of each other recently and some folks had just gotten power back from the first one when the second one hit. I love the Sandpoint area; the view from Amtrak over the bridge that crosses Lake Pend Oreille must be spectacular. But, darn it, every time I've been through Sandpoint on the Builder it has been close enough on time to still be dark when I was through there. The elevated highway there in Sandpoint is fairly new; it took a lot of political maneuvering and got lots of resistance from environmentalists and lots of time and money before it was built. Previously the only way through town was via surface streets and a dizzying array of one way streets and 90 degree corners. The environmentalists may not like the new highway but truck drivers certainly do. Just last week I traveled along the west side of Flathead Lake to Kalispell myself as our group returned to Glacier Park from Yellowstone. Oh, and the Funnel that Zephyr 17 talked of is a trainwatcher's (or foamer's, depending how you look at it :lol: paradise; plenty of action there to keep you busy. I remember years ago I was railfanning at the railroad yard just east of downtown Spokane and was joined by a man who for years had been trying to get his dream shot and hadn't been able to: A BNSF train crossing over the UP line between Spokane and Sandpoint at the same time a UP train was going underneath. I've always wondered if he ever managed to get a shot of that. Anyway, sounds like you had a great trip through my neck of the woods, relatively speaking, anyway.
