Steam & Excursion > SP&S 700 Charter on 10/14/14

Lerro Productions also visited the Oregon Rail Heritage Center this past week, and chartered the SP&S 700 for an afternoon and evening of run-bys and static poses for the benefit of a number of paying customers. The PRPA was pleased to fire up the 700 and participate in this activity, with the cooperation and help of the Oregon Pacific RR.

It was a great group effort here at ORHC, as one of the first photo charters done here. It wouldn't have been possible without the help and cooperation of Dick Samuels, Brian McCamish and the rest of the OPRR crew! Also, ORHC volunteers helped staff the center so that we could host the visitors on one of the off days for the center. We were able to put on a great show through the dedicated efforts of our PRPA crew who prepared the 700 and had her fired up and ready to go in the afternoon. Our Engineer for the day Jim Abney, put on a great show for the charter participants!

Dick has an amazing piece of railroad north of the MAX diamonds, and we were able to let the 700 show her stuff in a series of runbys by pulling a short 3 car passenger consist consisting of the PRPA combine/crew car, the Friends of the 4449 Travelers Rest, and the OPRR Santa Rosa Pullman observation car. It was a wonderfully matched consist, and this consist would not have been possible without the help of our friends, the Friends of the 4449, and Dick Samuels!

The weather cooperated in that the predicted rain for the day didn't come until we were wrapping up for the evening after the night photography sessions. Here are a few samples that I captured, but there are far better examples out there from the group of people who participated in the charter. Enjoy!

Steve Sedaker
Vice President, PRPA
Board of Directors, ORHF

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Very nice. So glad the charter happened
and went off so well. Great to see the 700
got to be out and about.

(Would you please put the images right-side up?
TUA!)

Corrected photos, fixed in LightRoom

Steve

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Aha - That's what I saw on TriMet's bridgecam the day AFTER the shoot. Their daily timelapse showed the 700 steaming outside the ORHC on a day when it was unexpected. Last week's weekly timelapse also shows it outside under steam on the 12th plus steaming and moving on the 14th.

http://trimet.org/pm/construction/bridgecams.htm#

One more....

Steve

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And here's the original size and cropping on your first two, Steve... thanks for the post! Engine looks great, as always...

~ BZ

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Sedaker Wrote:
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> It was a great group effort here at ORHC, as one
> of the first photo charters done here. It wouldn't
> have been possible without the help and
> cooperation of Dick Samuels, Brian McCamish and
> the rest of the OPRR crew! Also, ORHC volunteers
> helped staff the center so that we could host the
> visitors on one of the off days for the center. We
> were able to put on a great show through the
> dedicated efforts of our PRPA crew who prepared
> the 700 and had her fired up and ready to go in
> the afternoon. Our Engineer for the day Jim Abney,
> put on a great show for the charter participants!

Well thanks for the kudos and I'm happy that I was able to put some smiles on faces of the photo line participants but I'd like to remind all that an engineer can be only as good as his fireman allows him to be. Many thanks to my fireman Jeff Honeyman for a superb job of keeping up with the multiple, closely-spaced requests from the photographers for rapid acceleration from a standing start.

One of the run-bys may be seen on the SP&S 700 Facebook page courtesy of Lerro Productions. No one has commented yet that they were hearing time-era-correct CCOR Rule 15(k) (for reasons obvious in the video) rather than a crossing whistle.

Jeff and I had a great day working together and I'm looking forward to working with him again later this year on the ORHF Holiday Express trains and on the Oregon Zoo's annual ZooLights festival featuring the Washington Park & Zoo Railway's 2½-foot gauge 9-ton model of the "Reno".

Also from the 700's Facebook page here's Jeff and I having a "job briefing".

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That last one is a great shot. Jim, I know you are an excellent engineer. When I first saw Steve's initial post, I had to think, "Jim has defied gravity." Looks and sounds like it was fun for all involved.

That is a great shot! That one is a real keeper. Jim does know how to defy the laws of Physics by making those fantastic fast starts and stops for the run-bys that day!!!

Steve

Was there a following section of the train running?

Frisco1522 Wrote:
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> Was there a following section of the train
> running?

You got it, Don. We wanted to give the impression of it for the photo shoot. I really enjoyed the mental sharpening provided by operating on the TT&TO system and I was sad to see it disappear. I expect that you spent many years working it also.