Steam & Excursion > Portland Oregon - SP&S 866 - Scrapped

I only saw one comment here on an old thread but the FA stored in NW Portland recently got scrapped, there are pictures on Facebook. Also, read elsewhere that some of the other equipment may have been scrapped but haven't seen confirmation. Sad but I guess we can't save everything.

Peter M
Murrieta, CA

As far as I know, everything on site met the torch. Or, in this case, the shredder.

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/24 11:29 by A-1.

Sad to hear. At least the 866B still exists along with a few other ex SP&S FA-1's ---  Ken 

A-1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As far as I know, everything on site met the torch.

Which site would this have been?

Northwest Portland, adjacent to the BNSF intermodal yard......I believe the two tank cars also located there are getting a new life.   one of the 866 number boards has been saved.   Arlen

Other than the 2 tank cars, what other equipment was still there?

Posted from Android

Peter M
Murrieta, CA

Kemacprr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sad to hear. At least the 866B still exists along
> with a few other ex SP&S FA-1's ---  Ken 

Other SP&S FA's sitll exist?  Great, where are they?  

Rail cars located in NW Portland:  two tank cars, 866, Ice Lake, Clackamas River, two bag dormitories, and the last AFT visitor car.  except for the tank cars, all had received significant damage from vandels.  Arlen

wingomann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kemacprr Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Sad to hear. At least the 866B still exists
> along
> > with a few other ex SP&S FA-1's ---  Ken 
>
> Other SP&S FA's sitll exist?  Great, where are
> they?  

On the east coast. 858, 860 and 864 respectively. In hands of various private owners. None operable. 
 

wingomann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kemacprr Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Sad to hear. At least the 866B still exists
> along
> > with a few other ex SP&S FA-1's ---  Ken 
>
> Other SP&S FA's sitll exist?  Great, where are
> they?  

Presumably ones that were used as cab/power cars on the LIRR.

Dave

as was the 866

The American Freedom Train (AFT) car referred to in this thread, which was also scrapped in Feb. 2024, was AFT No. 111. It was the Exit Car for visitors.

It was owned by the Pacific Railroad Preservation Association (PRPA) since 2004, when it was moved to Portland, Oregon. Todd Schannuth, American Freedom Train historian, related that this was the last remaining car that 7 million visitors went through on the train. The car was later part of the Canadian Discovery Train and also operated on the Winter Park Ski Train. Car 111 played the same role on the Discovery Train that it had on the American Freedom Train—it was the exit car for visitors and the power car for the trainset. It was sold to Union Pacific about 1981 and renumbered UP 206 for use with their business train. It was sold to a private individual in about 2001 before ownership transferred to the PRPA in 2004 and renumbered PRPX 111.

Some Photos of the 866, from about 2018 in storage in NW Portland, Oregon and the recent posting on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/AOTTORCH/)  during the scrapping operation.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/24 12:23 by TTStetz3.

---

---

More info on the SP&S 866....

It was built by Alco as construction number 78286 in Jan 1950 for the SP&S, one of 28 FA-1 and FA-2 owned by that railroad. None were equipped with a steam boiler for passenger service. In the early 1970s, SP&S "turned in" a number of their Alco locomotives. The 866 became the Long Island's No. 613. The car was retired from Long Island in 1998. It was purchased, with no prime mover, for scrap value at that time by Northwest Rail Museum of Portland Oregon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/24 12:18 by TTStetz3.

The ORHF affiliated equipment stored in NW Portland is a valuable lesson for preservationists. It seems like some of the pieces were sent there simply because they existed in the cumulative collection around the end of Brooklyn Roundhouse, and some had real potential. Seems like you have to have all three to have a solid preservation operation: available manpower, space, and money. The end of 866 bums me out especially, as my dad put miles on it early in his career and even claims to have hit a truck with it on the Oregon Trunk. BUT... even though Clackamas River was great when it went there, what purpose would it serve ORHF with their available space and operations? Same with the AFT coach and RPOs. The existence of all that equipment was well known, but were there any solid proposals by other entities to acquire them? I heard switches connecting the site to active rail had been pulled, so would the railroads even want to bother with moving them? Would whoever owned the site want to deal with trucking this or that out of there separately or was it a case of "you can have a week or two to make it all get gone, make it happen or it's only gonna get worse?" The various groups behind the scrapped equipment have taken considerable social media flak over this, but it's easy to understand why it all had to be let go. If they only had a couple weeks to figure it out, that's not much time to line up a scrapper that can have it done in time to not have it turn into a legal mess. I imagine they had to choose between that, or frantically finding separate homes for all of it plus transportation arrangements. And if that didn't work, who knows what kind of lawsuits they'd end up with. Some FB folks have said they'll never support ORHF again and bashed them for taking on their new Shay while scrapping this stuff. But the Shay adds variety to the museum, whereas five more of the same shape of coaches and a functionally useless diesel shell doesn't. The ORHC is looking great, and moving it all there would make it look like a cramped junkyard. The situation was a bummer, but probably more complex than anyone that wasn't responsible for the equipment realizes. A lot of their volunteer work went into saving all that, and they ended up having to watch it all get shredded. And I doubt they made any money on scrapping it. If you take sentimentality out of it and look at it from a financial angle, it's easy to understand.

Posted from Android

A-1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The ORHF affiliated equipment stored in NW
> Portland is a valuable lesson for
> preservationists. It seems like some of the pieces
> were sent there simply because they existed in the
> cumulative collection around the end of Brooklyn
> Roundhouse, and some had real potential. Seems
> like you have to have all three to have a solid
> preservation operation: available manpower, space,
> and money. The end of 866 bums me out especially,
> as my dad put miles on it early in his career and
> even claims to have hit a truck with it on the
> Oregon Trunk. BUT... even though Clackamas River
> was great when it went there, what purpose would
> it serve ORHF with their available space and
> operations? Same with the AFT coach and RPOs. The
> existence of all that equipment was well known,
> but were there any solid proposals by other
> entities to acquire them? I heard switches
> connecting the site to active rail had been
> pulled, so would the railroads even want to bother
> with moving them? Would whoever owned the site
> want to deal with trucking this or that out of
> there separately or was it a case of "you can have
> a week or two to make it all get gone, make it
> happen or it's only gonna get worse?" The various
> groups behind the scrapped equipment have taken
> considerable social media flak over this, but it's
> easy to understand why it all had to be let go. If
> they only had a couple weeks to figure it out,
> that's not much time to line up a scrapper that
> can have it done in time to not have it turn into
> a legal mess. I imagine they had to choose between
> that, or frantically finding separate homes for
> all of it plus transportation arrangements. And if
> that didn't work, who knows what kind of lawsuits
> they'd end up with. Some FB folks have said
> they'll never support ORHF again and bashed them
> for taking on their new Shay while scrapping this
> stuff. But the Shay adds variety to the museum,
> whereas five more of the same shape of coaches and
> a functionally useless diesel shell doesn't. The
> ORHC is looking great, and moving it all there
> would make it look like a cramped junkyard. The
> situation was a bummer, but probably more complex
> than anyone that wasn't responsible for the
> equipment realizes. A lot of their volunteer work
> went into saving all that, and they ended up
> having to watch it all get shredded. And I doubt
> they made any money on scrapping it. If you take
> sentimentality out of it and look at it from a
> financial angle, it's easy to understand.
>
> Posted from Android

Well said. It takes a lot of money for these things. To get the 866 to a point of even being a static display would have been a lot. And then where would it go? What has meant more to me is the old heads and their stories about all of the SP&S Alcos. Certainly the FA's were legendary, and definitely come to mind when one thinks of the SP&S. It's tough to say goodbye but at least it was scrapped in Portland. Meanwhile there are three others that could probably be attained, plus a few of the four axle Centuries out there. Just takes money! I think an intact Century would be a good fit for the ORHC if they ever desired to have an SP&S dismal. Much more to work with on a lot of levels. Way better than the roached out hulk of the 866.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/24 19:36 by GN599.

A-1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The end of 866 bums me out especially, as my dad put miles on it early in
> his career and even claims to have hit a truck with it on the Oregon Trunk.


A-1, I certainly understand your being bummed out by the demise of the 866.  I shed a tear for it also as both my father and I ran it for thousands of miles on the SP&S and I ran it on the BN also, before which time he had moved to Spokane - Pasco passenger service on #1 and #2.  He was the engineer on the very last SP&S/BN passenger train to depart its initial terminal.  It was quite a disappointment for the last trip as the lead unit was the BN 1978 (SP&S 153) so he and his fireman had to listen to the obnoxious rattling of the electrical cabinet doors for so many miles when running in the second notch.

Copied below is my response written years ago to kdmontreal's post about the window regulator.  I'm repeating it here because it has some remembrances of the FAs which may be interesting to younger members of Trainorders.  The interior picture looking forward from the FA was taken at the south end of the Vancouver Diesel Shop.

-------------------------------------------------------
kgmontreal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember being in FAs where moving the window
> crank an inch dropped the window a foot. It was
> frightening. It seemed like the glass did a free
> fall into the carbody. Why it didn't break I
> can't imagine. I presume PAs were the same.
>
> KG


Yeah, KG, it was a very short-throw handle, but I sure liked 'em. I thought they were far superior to the puny GMC WWII automobile-style handle on the EMDs which took a lot of cranking to get the window up or down. You could open or close the window quickly and easily if the spring-loaded glass pane elevator was maintained. I've never had the privilege of running a PA but I put many, many thousands of miles on FAs. Maybe when Doyle gets his PA running he'll let me back it into the enginehouse as he let me do with the 4449 into the ex-SP&S Hoyt Street roundhouse in Portland after it had been turned on the turntable at the end of the trip on May 8, 1975 when I was his pilot engineer.

Two distinct things about the ALCO FAs made them far superior to the EMD Fs in my mind: (1) Though they were probably just as loud in the cab as an F, the noise was at a lower pitch and much easier on one's ears in the days before hearing protection became all the rage. By the time I got done with a 16-hour day of a measly-powered high-tonnage train crawling from one passing track to the next my head hurt from the high-pitched whine of the Fs and (2) The FAs (and the MU RSs also) had a six-position EC switch (OFF- IDLE - 2 - 4 - 6 - 8) compared to the EMD F's two-position switch (IDLE - RUN). While battling one's way up the snake-like curving route on the hill out of South Junction on the Oregon Trunk Railway having that governor-limiting ability on a lead unit could mean the difference of having to double the hill or not. You could just leave the MU throttle in Run 8 and restrict the lead unit only to Run 6 or sometimes Run 4 if the sanders weren't doing a good enough job. I hated having an EMD on the point of a multiple engine consist in a slippery situation. Years later on their second-generation power GE came out with their "Notch 7" which helped a little bit in some situations but was far from having the usefulness of the FA's EC switch. Even better than the FA model was the ALCO Century series which offered a 0-100% lead unit reduction rheostat on the control panel which allowed making use of every possible horsepower right up to the slipping point.

I'm sorry the pictures of the window crank and EC switch aren't any larger. I didn't have much to work with and if I increased the size much more they became too pixelated.

Another nice feature of the ALCO FA (and PA also I assume) was the gauge panel at night. The motoring/dynamic braking ammeter, speedometer and two air brake gauges seen in the fourth picture were illuminated by a black light so that only the various colored gauge markings and needles were visible. There were two styles of ammeter gauges available. The inner, dynamic braking scale was white for <800 amps and red for >800 amps on both models. The outer, motoring scale on one style (which the SP&S used and is exhibited by the left dial in the 5th picture) was white for 900 amps and lower and yellow for >900 amps with 40-, 20-, 10-, 5- and 4-minute allowable amperage markings on the scale in the appropriate places. The motoring scale of the other style was white for <900 amps, yellow for 900 amps to <1,100 amps and red for 1,100 amps and greater and did not have any allowable minute markings.

The speedometer in the dash panel of the SP&S FA in the third picture is a replacement unit because manual transition FAs were factory-equipped with a speed-transition meter having two scales. The outer scale was calibrated in miles per hour, while the inner scale was marked 1, 2, 3 and 4 which represented the four transition positions of the selector handle. As the speed of the locomotive increased or decreased, the selector handle was moved to the corresponding position indicated by the pointer, hopefully without too big of a fireworks display from inside the high voltage cabinet, which was especially likely to occur when downshifting from 3 (unshunted parallel) to 2 (shunted series) if one didn't allow enough time for the shift movement. The sought-after objective was to lose as little speed as possible on the ascending grade without unduly damaging the pneumatic high voltage contactors. The shift points for our SP&S manual-transition-only FAs with their 40" wheels and 65 MPH freight gearing were at 17, 23 and 49 MPH. I have never heard whether the Chicago Pneumatic speed indicator and plastic-stylus-on-waxed-paper recorder seen above the control panel was part of the locomotive when purchased or if it was added later when the company wanted to start recording speeds. You'll notice that it is a 75 MPH speedometer compared to the 120 MPH replacement speedometer in the dash panel which is obviously a bit of an overkill for a 65 MPH- geared locomotive.

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/24 01:24 by Jim700.

---

---

---

It's nice to see a post from you Jim. 

Cheers, Dave



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/24 05:39 by Hillcrest.

Hillcrest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's nice to see a post from you Jim, 
>
> Cheers, Dave

I agree! Thanks for the tutorial as well! I've read about Alcos having the capability to drop tractive effort through both ways you've described. Pretty dang handy option. Another thing I've heard is the FA's rarely burned up a traction motor. You could leave the ammeter in the red and just let 'em go. Also I understand they had decent dynamic brakes for their time. The SP&S definitely got their moneys worth out of them! And Jim, while we are on the topic of first generation Alcos. Do you recall if the dynamic brakes still worked on the former NP RS3's that came west after the merger? Like the 4081 or 4082 for example? I've always wondered what it would be like running one of those with the dynamic brakes in front of you in that short hood!

A bit more info posted Railfan & Railroad Magazine on the SP&S 866 scrapping, posted on Mar. 29, 2024.

See: https://railfan.com/former-sps-alco-fa-1-scrapped-in-portland/

From that article: "The owner of SPS 866 was Northwest Rail Museum, a non-profit entity founded in 1986 by former Oregon State Rail Planner Ed Immel. Following the development of several local organizations dedicated to railroad preservation activities, Immel decided that the best course for NRM was to join forces with the other groups in the ORHF partnership, which was initially based in Southern Pacific’s Brooklyn Roundhouse (later Union Pacific). The arrangement ended when UP gave notice that the roundhouse would be demolished in 2012, leading to its replacement by the Oregon Rail Heritage Center the same year. The 866 and a group of railcars owned by various organizations were moved to the NW Industrial Area site at that time."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/24 19:17 by TTStetz3.