Western Railroad Discussion > SP&S fans, more questions please

Here is a picture of an F3 at (I believe) Pasco Wa. It looks almost the same as the picture of the E7 from a few days back.

Can anyone confirm this? Appreciate any further info you might have.

Yardclerk

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Yardclerk, I will go with Pasco again because of the brick between the tracks and the background is the same as the last shot you posted.

The paint scheme is a much earlier one for the SPS, so I think you are looking early 60's or older. Neat stuff!

Dan

Judging from this picture, The SP&S ran mixed trains.

Does anyone have any info that they could share.

Yardclerk

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You are getting beyond my expertise. Two great books on the SP&S are:

1. The Northwest's Own Railway, Vol 1 Walter S. Grande
2. The Northwest's Own Railway, Vol 2 Walter S. Grande.

I'm too lazy to look up the SP&S mixed trains. Sorry.

Dan

SP&S ran mixed trains #102 and #103 on the Oregon Trunk between Wishram, WA and Bend, OR. These trains used combines #272 and #273 as cabooses. During fishing season an extra heavyweight coach such as #274, #275, or #276 would be added. Motive power was most any of the first generation diesels.

Above distilled from the SP&S group on Yahoo.

Jim W.

The SP&S did run a mixed train from Wishram down to Bend - train #102/#103 daily except Sunday, train #105 Saturdays from Bend to Wishram. Passenger cars were #272 and #273 which were baggage/coachs and also served as the caboose for the conductor. Scheduled for six hours but rarely stayed on it as it was also a local freight. Because most of the passengers were hunters and fishers, the train would virtually stop anywhere along the route to pick up or drop off passengers.

Source: "Spokane, Portland & Seattle Ry. Color Pictorial" by Todd Schwenk - Four Ways West Publications. ISBN 1-885614-20-9

(Also lots of good pictures of the locomotive fleet, including paint schemes, locomotive assignments, etc.) There are quite a few good books written on the SP&S - Ed Austin and Tom Dill did a book published by Pacific Fast Mail; "The North Bank Road" is another good book (more historical, less pictorial). ColumbiaDan named the other two excellent references.

And those mixed trains ran all the way up to April 30, 1971, the day before Amtrak.

ejwoodward wrote:
>
> SP&S ran mixed trains #102 and #103 on the Oregon Trunk between
> Wishram, WA and Bend, OR. These trains used combines #272 and
> #273 as cabooses. During fishing season an extra heavyweight
> coach such as #274, #275, or #276 would be added. Motive power
> was most any of the first generation diesels.
>
> Above distilled from the SP&S group on Yahoo.
>
> Jim W.

I swear I started my message BEFORE Jim wrote. I swear!!

Definitely Pasco, WA.
Because it is daylight it had to either be the streamliner (#2 ) which arrived at 7:05 pm from Portlland (although I don't see any domes) or the day train (# 5&6) which was discontinued in the early 1960s

The shot of the mixed appears to be the southbounder at Redmond.

- gb -

Doing a random search on the Internet tonight, found out that the SP&S coach/baggage combine #273 was acquired by a historical society in Astoria, OR and being restored:

http://www.companyontheweb.com/ads03/

Lots of pictures, would be nice to see this run again!

The train in the first photo is train #2 at Pasco in Aug. 1963. The 801 is indeed a F-3. The NP cars have already been switched out.
Too many cars for the 5 or 6, which was also known as the Columbia River Express. The Express generally was about 3 cars. It was primarily a mail train for handling local traffic between Portland and Pasco. It was discontinued on Sept 30, 1959.

SPS cars 272, 275 and 276 which were used on the Oregon Trunk mixed
train are at Snoqualmie, WA, still hauling passengers. As stated the 273 is at Astoria now. Also the 276 is being restored.
http://www.trainmuseum.org/Roundhouse/Coach%20276/276.htm

Troyce Brooks
Rails Northwest
http://www.trainweb.org/railsnw
brookstroycecath@qwest.net

wigwagfan wrote of 102/103 "Because most of the passengers were hunters and fishers, the train would virtually stop anywhere along the route to pick up or drop off passengers".

It certainly did. I thoroughly enjoyed running the job with its usual power assignment of 2 or 3 ALCO RS3s and IIRC about 60-80 cars. I'd see some fisherman or camper swinging us down with a flashlight and would stop the combine at their location to pick them up. The conductor would sell them a ticket to the station closest to the place they wanted to detrain. The station at Maupin would be a really busy place on Friday nights as the baggage end of the combine was loaded to the gills with camping and fishing gear and even inflatable boats. We'd detrain the passengers anywhere they wanted along the Deschutes, not just at a station. A fishing club from Portland used to come to Wishram on #4 on some summer Friday nights and would charter the 274 (a full coach normally kept at Wishram as protection for the 272 and 273) which we would set out at Sinamox and pick up on the return trip. The 272 and 273 were originally full coaches. You can see them as full coaches in published pictures of what I believe was an early 1950s NRHS convention excurison to Vernonia. All of those heavyweight cars used on 102/103 (the "Rocket" as locals often called it) rode very well and they often came out of the curves on the Trunk faster than the engine went into them. It was common to run the portion of the UP line between Paxton and South Junction at 27-29 MPH on the Rocket even though the "offical" speed sign said 10. Of course in those days there was plenty of super in the curves which the BN pretty much removed. Farther north along the Deschutes the "35" was stretched to 52 or so in places. On an 80-car freight not losing any time for meets the usual running time was 4'30" from Bend to the Celilo bridge. They sure don't run like that anymore.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/20 16:04 by Jim700.