Steam & Excursion > SP&S 700 61 years ago

Wishram, WA 5/20/56

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Super Great Photo!
ALLEN

A farewell to steam type event?

Outstanding! The SP&S folks need to spot the lovely gal in the same location and stage a look-like!

Yes

Milwaukee Wrote:
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> A farewell to steam type event?

from our soon to be published Significant Events in the History of the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation:

1956 On May 20th the SP&S 700 pulled a 21 car, 1,300 passenger train, Farewell to Steam, from Portland
to Wishram, Washington. Following the trip, the 700 and all remaining SP&S steam locomotives were retired
and sent to the scrap line.

to say I have learned a lot in doing the research for this pamphlet would be a vast understatement....

this is a GREAT picture of this historic event!

Arlen

asheldrake Wrote:
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> 1956 On May 20th the SP&S 700 pulled a 21 car, 1,300 passenger train, Farewell
> to Steam, from Portland to Wishram, Washington. Following the trip, the 700
> and all remaining SP&S steam locomotives were retired and sent to the scrap line.


Arlen, I have a claimed familial tie to this event. The engineer this day was Joseph Thomas "Tommy" Craine. His firing date on the SP&S was 03/08/18 and he was promoted to engineer on 01/06/37. Tommy and his wife Mary were very close friends and next door neighbors of my paternal grandparents in Wishram where my grandfather was an SP&S carman working on the RIP track and also the cook on the derrick wreck train whenever it was called out. From the time my sister and I were born in the mid-'40s Tommy and Mary were our "extra grandparents". By that time Mary had outlived two previous husbands and her son and apparently needed some young'uns to dote upon which she did in great fashion.

While our families were on vacation together at Hoods Canal about 1951, Tommy, my grandfather, my sister and I were out on a boat fishing and he watched me "catch" my first fish. Not knowing any differently, as a kid I was pretty proud of myself. Only many years later did Tommy fess up to the fact that he and my grandfather had decided to put a small bait fish on my hook when I wasn't looking and toss it overboard for me to reel in.

Tommy eventually returned to Vancouver, taking a company position as Traveling Engineer (nowadays called an RFE) but after a few years his Irish ancestry demeanor caused him to throw up the job and return to running. By the early '60s when I was in high school in Spokane he was working SP&S #2 Portland to Pasco every third day (returning on #3 early the next morning) and I would often ride the head end with him from Pasco when going to Wishram to visit my grandparents or occasionally on to Portland to volunteer with the Vernonia, South Park & Sunset Steam Railroad group in its early days.

Unfortunately Tommy's career was cut short of what he intended when he hit a log truck on #2 at the Co-Ply mill crossing at MP 53 between the Bridge of the Gods and Stevenson. The smoke from the resulting fire damaged his lungs.

The second photo is of Tommy and Mary on their 25th wedding anniversary in 1960. The third photo is of a treasured memento which Mary gave to me after Tommy's death. It was his firing valve stop clamp which he made in the Vancouver roundhouse very early in his engine service career. It is a thick piece of bar steel forged into a "U" shape with a thumb screw threaded through one side of the "U".

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