Nostalgia & History > View from the Shasta Daylight 1964

I was riding the Shasta Daylight from Eugene to Oakland and took some views from the vestibule as we rolled through the Cascades. Where is this location?

Robert Morris Photography
http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/index1.html

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Noisy Creek Trestle, Tunnel 9 near Frazier?

Yep, must have been mid-June with that strong light.

What was the time of day for the Shasta Daylight, leaving Eugene or arriving at Crescent Lake or Chemult for example? I did ride a few SP trains but they seemed to have been late in the season, mostly dark going through there.

TCnR Wrote:
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> Yep, must have been mid-June with that strong
> light.
>
> What was the time of day for the Shasta Daylight,
> leaving Eugene or arriving at Crescent Lake or
> Chemult for example? I did ride a few SP trains
> but they seemed to have been late in the season,
> mostly dark going through there.

Number 9 left Eugene 1001 am in 1964, so its late morning

That makes sense. The location also has a poor southern exposure, tough shadows in there most of the year.

Very nice!

The "Shasta" triple-unit Coffee Shop-Kitchen-Diner is probably SP 10265-66-67, and running its last season or two in "Daylight" colors before being repainted into Simulated Stainless Steel with a scarlet stripe. The car was retired in 1968. I stepped inside when it had been moved to storage at Bayshore Yard near San Francisco. Vandals had thrown a bag of flour from the kitchen all over the floors and tables. Pretty benign, as vandalism goes. The sister car stayed in the red and orange until retirement, then went to Judge Hofheinz and his ill-fated railroad car hotel project near the Astrodome. He apparently wanted a package deal for many different SP car types then in storage awaiting disposition, where other railroads were only interested in bidding on small lots of particular types. His bid seemed more favorable to SP's interests at the time, as the correspondence seems to show. Move out the lot, make a bit more than scrap price.

Odds are the Dome Lounge behind is SP3605, which was built for the "Shasta Daylight" in 1955 by SP in their Sacramento Shops. It and sister 3606 (which got all stainless sides, no painted pier panel as here in Bob's photo) were the only Dome Lounges on SP with full lounge-style seating on the upper level.

The car behind that is tough to make out, but is likely one of the 77-foot Chair Cars rebuilt with legrest seats in the middle 1950s by SP for the same route's overnight "Cascade", Trains 11 and 12. Not positive, since it's a little hard to read the vestibule end details in the photo. But it would be natural to assign a "Cascade"-assigned car for higher traffic on Trains 9-10 the "Shasta", I believe.

Cool pic. Classy train even to the end.

~ BZ

It amazes me they built this line thru that very tough volcanic terrain, what with the slippage and steep ravines. Tougher to engineer than the Siskiyous--many tunnels vs. 1 on Siskiyou Summit, not to mention the many bridges, land slide risks, snowfall and rain run-off.