Western Railroad Discussion > Renton Rocket (Boeing Train, Seattle, WA)

Many thanks to TO member NoGrainer for the guided railfan tour, and the timely chase & intercept.

I visited Seattle after Winterail, and NoGrainer offered to share his knowledge of Seattle area railfanning. This is just one of the results.

- Cherry blossoms near Boeing's Renton factory.
- Cherry blossoms + 737.
- Videos of Cascades meet & Houser Way street running.

(more next)

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NoGrainer's "Green Pickle" report in January:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,6132895

He led me to an elevated location overlooking Boeing's Renton factory where he thought it'd work much better for video than photo. You be the judge.

I'm working on a separate report of other actions we caught that day. That's it for now.

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Nice seeing you and awesome videos! Love how close the timing was with the Cascade train in downtown. 

Super interesting videos, very nice!

I rode a few detouring Northern Pacific North Coast Limiteds and later a couple of detouring Amtrak Empire Builders on that downtown Renton trackage between the late 60s and late 70s. But instead of turning left toward Boeing's Renton plant as the Boeing train does, we turned right onto the Milwaukee Road's Snoqualmie Pass line over the Cascades. Much of that is now a trail, unfortunately, thanks to the BN's Frisco managers who abandoned it. Their early BN predecessors purchased and wanted to rehab the Milwaukee line and abandon the nearby, much-tougher ex-NP Stampede Pass route over the Cascades. At least Stampede survived the Frisco attempt to get rid of it too.

 It's worth noting that the former Northern Pacific line over Stampede Pass is more isolated than the former Great Northern line over Stevens Pass to the North, with lower overhead clearances and only a modest CTC installation through Stampede Tunnel. The Milwaukee Road line over Snoqualmie Pass would have been a better choice, IF the Powers That Be in Milwaukee cared, though their money issues & the closure of the Weyerhaeuser Mill in Snoqualmie Falls in 1981 would have brought an end to that line.