Nostalgia & History > Not the 507's best day

A forgotten meet put the Extra SP&S 507 West (engineer Cochran) and the Extra GN 2030 East (engineer John Harper) together at Oakbrook, Oregon on the Oregon Trunk Railway on February 1, 1945. The 507, a January 1913 Baldwin product built as the GN 3024, came to the SP&S on July 15, 1929. This wreck finished its life and the engine was dismantled on April 28, 1945 with the tender lasting just over four more years.

Photo 1: There's not much remaining of the cab of the 507. The smokebox and stack of the 2030 are visible at the top center of the photo.

Photo 2: The 507 is barely visible resting under a box car just behind the stack cap of the 2030.

Photo 3: My "extra grampa" SP&S Traveling Engineer J. T. "Tommy" Craine is inspecting the wreckage.

In the early '50s I caught my one and only fish while out in a boat on Washington State's Hood's Canal with Tommy and my SP&S Wishram Carman grandfather J. A. "Al" Abney who was also the cook on the Wishram derrick train picking up this wreck. Tommy was a long-time #1 SP&S engineer before his retirement and ran the SP&S 700 pulling 21 cars on its "Farewell to Steam" trip to Wishram on May 20, 1956.

Many years later engineer Harper was involved in another wreck when he got into a rock slide while heading down the hill between Scribner and Fort Wright.

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The full report on this accident is available on the ICC/DOT Historical Archives website. Thanks for posting these!