Western Railroad Discussion > Railfanning by boat

This past long holiday weekend my friend Stan Lytle and his wife took their boat over to Montana from Seattle for some camping and boating. Friday night they came back to the Spokane airport to pick me up and we headed back to Sandpoint, ID for the night.

The next morning Stan and I took the boat out to the south end of the long ex-NP bridge over Lake Pend Oreille where we photographed 8 trains, one of them this eastbound BNSF H-PASFTW with units 8205/6767/6900/6375 which went by at 7am. The water was pretty choppy.

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Later that afternoon we headed over to Trestle Creek, ID where we went down to the Pack River Fill to wait for something to show up on the MRL. About 3pm this eastbound V-PTLKCK showed up. Note the IC SD70.

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Then it was back to Sandpoint for the evening where we caught this eastbound Z-train with BNSF 5309/4737/8711/ATSF 628/BNSF 111 at 6:48pm at the east switch of Algoma, ID.

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And the last photo is of this westbound freight crossing the bridge at 8pm with BN 9256/BNSF 3123/6922.

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Great shots. My favorite is the first one. I have one shot from a ferry back in '83. I was in Seattle headed to Bremerton. I think what I saw was a S&NC barge full of box cars headed to Seattle.

Brian, really nice shots! I have often thought that the best photos of a steam excursion up through the Columbia River gorge could probably be gotten from a boat out in the Columbia. Gonna have to try that next time.

Like the above posters have said these are great photos. Catching that "B" unit in BNSF colors what a shot. I have only seen those in Santa Fe war bonnet paint.

Doug Forness

That B unit looked like a GP-38?

Is that a drawspan in the fourth photo?
jofegan

yes, it was a swing span, but is locked into postion right now with welded rail across it. The adjcent highway bridge has no provision for ship passage though.

Ted Curphey
funnelfan@icehouse.net

This was the BNSF 2249, a GP38-2B. And yes, the long bridge out of Sandpoint did have an operating drawspan at one time but has not been used for many years from what I understand.

I know of few guys who drool over boats that they see when working.

Excelent, excelent photographs Brian.

Jim