Steam & Excursion > There's No Mistaking Steam Power Working Heavy Freight Up Grade!

One glance at a photo like this tells us unmistakably that we are watching big steam power on the mainline exerting itself to take it's heavy train up the grade ahead.

Power for this train on Southern Pacific's Donner Pass is lead by 4-10-2 #5036.  We can only assume that similar power is seen at the rear shoving equally hard.  The photographer has captured well the billowing smoke of this slow moving heavy train headed upgrade. 

Now, if he only could have captured the sound as this train passed him!

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/19 01:17 by LoggerHogger.

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Wow!  A 3 cylinder on Donner.  What as awesome sight.

It has been a while since I read Boynton's "Three Barrels of Steam", but my recollection is that the 5000s didn't last long on Donner.

Z

zephyrus Wrote:
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> Wow!  A 3 cylinder on Donner.  What as awesome
> sight.
>
> It has been a while since I read Boynton's "Three
> Barrels of Steam", but my recollection is that the
> 5000s didn't last long on Donner.
>
> Z

Long wheelbase and Donner curves were not a match made in heaven. Not to mention they weren't Cab-forwards and the crews perferred to not be gassed.

Martin:

Thanks for posting! Instantly recognizable classic Donner Pass landscape married with steam - the perfect match. As you say sound would have been great, but also let's not forget a whiff of that classic oil fired steam exhaust and the inevitable ground shaking as the consist rumbled by. Better than any CGI in movie theaters.

Fantastic.

John Mills

Guess he must be on a signal bridge
below Andover, on the curve at
39.3022N 120.2564W.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/19 10:26 by timz.

>>>>Guess he must be on a signal bridge 
>>>>below Andover, on the curve at 
>>>>39.3022N 120.2564W.

He wasn't using a drone?

SpeederDriver Wrote:
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> >>>>Guess he must be on a signal bridge 
> >>>>below Andover, on the curve at 
> >>>>39.3022N 120.2564W.
>
> He wasn't using a drone?

Maybe a steam-powered drone!

A curious observation; why is the exhaust smoke on the lead locomotive simply "billowing" out of the stack, while the rear helper is seriously blasting the smoke very high skyward? Wonder if the lead locomotive may have just eased down on the throttle.

HotWater Wrote:
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> A curious observation; why is the exhaust smoke on
> the lead locomotive simply "billowing" out of the
> stack, while the rear helper is seriously blasting
> the smoke very high skyward? Wonder if the lead
> locomotive may have just eased down on the
> throttle.

You might be right, with the addition that he slipped, shut off and had not begun to open the throttle once again.

If the photographer is, as suggested, on a signal bridge, then it may be train is just being brought to a stop, relying on the rear engineer to keep working until he can no longer shove against the brake application.

LD

Very nice..!!