Western Railroad Discussion > Chasing PNWR's "Toledo Patch"

A while back I solicted some advice for some various Oregon subjects for a some photography during a recent family vaction. One target of my efforts was the PNWR "Toledo Patch" job, which recrews the overnight "Toledo Hauler" crew on it's way back from the big mill at the west end of the line at Toledo Oregon. I was more than a little concerned about dragging the family out of bed for an early morning train chase, especially since I'd basically be running a bit blind trying to find the train east of Toledo in the Oregon woods. Fortune favored me though as I ducked off the highway and back to the tracks at Eddyville and almost immediately found the train loping across the grade crossing. Here are a few photos from a liesurely but productive chase. 
1. It was a typical foggy morning in the coastal mountains, but I was just delighted to immediately find the train. The first shot was only a couple miles down the road at a rural farm crossing east of Eddyville with the drone. 
2. A few miles further I caught them coming out of the woods along Nashville Rd west of Nortons, OR.
3. The slow pace of the train enabled us to jump ahead again and catch the lead unit nosing out onto one of several wooden trestles on the line.

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4. One of my favorite shots was this crossing of the Yaquina River between Nortons and Nashville.
5. As the train came into Nashville, the climb starts to steepen and all 6 units gave us a great show starting up the mountain.
6. Cresting the grade at appropriately named Summit OR.

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One final shot now out in the sunlight east of the summit, passing the covered bridge at Harris OR. 

Sorry the rendering on these came out a bit soft in the post. I don't know if its TO's compression algorithm working against me or maybe I need to use a little more of the sharpening tool in lightroom (I finally upgraded from a 10 year old copy of elements and its a bit of a learning curve...). But anyways, thanks to those that chimed in on my request a couple months ago. I'll have some other goodies to post soon!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/26 17:16 by DJ-12.

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Impressive aerial images especially with the covered bridge.  Glad you had a successful PNWR encounter during your family vacation.

Great series!

Very scenic area and very nice photos. It looks like a healthy length of train.

Posted from Android

That's a new angle on the Harris covered bridge!
Nice series of photos, and glad you had a good chase!

Wyatt

Excellent job.
JB

Outstanding presentation and IOTD well-deserved!

BB

Nicely done!
go

There are some threads on here about how the TO server likes uploaded photos to be resized, I believe a 1000 pixel image width seems to be optimum, don't know if that worked for you.

Thanks for the great photos!
Oliver Barrett

DJ-12 Wrote:
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> One final shot now out in the sunlight east of the
> summit, passing the covered bridge at Harris
> OR. 
>
> Sorry the rendering on these came out a bit soft
> in the post. I don't know if its TO's compression
> algorithm working against me or maybe I need to
> use a little more of the sharpening tool in
> lightroom (I finally upgraded from a 10 year old
> copy of elements and its a bit of a learning
> curve...). But anyways, thanks to those that
> chimed in on my request a couple months ago. I'll
> have some other goodies to post soon!

Awesome series!

Boy, I wish I had a drone back in the '70s when SP was running solid sets of "covered wagons."  Nice selection.  Thanks!

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

Congrats on a great chase and an IOTD.
Certainly looks like a drone required branch simply because of ground access, the drone makes for some great overall photos of a beautiful part fo Oregon. Trees are inherently tough to get sharp image. Agree with the reduce to 999 before posting, don't know what the story is but it seems to work better. It's also better to simply have more control over your photo.
t4p.
 

DJ-12 Wrote:
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> One final shot now out in the sunlight east of the
> summit, passing the covered bridge at Harris
> OR. 
I especially love this shot. Hope your family shared the joy of what you did!

In regards to resizing images before upload, computers and software like multiples of 2, 4, 8, 16... use even numbers if you can, but 960 to meet the 1000 pixel requirement is what I recommend. Algorithms (size reduction, sharpening, etc) like numbers that are friendly to bits, nybbles and bytes,