Nostalgia & History > NWP lumber with 8 SD 9's

Two matched sets, four each of SD 9's, on a lumber train south (RR west) out of Willits, CA 6/24/71. My brother and self went just far
enough out of town to clear the coastal fog for this series. In the first,the helper set can be seen exhausting far in the background.. In the
last, the head end is really working hard. No "bricks", or soot covered units here.

Most of the mills that loaded these cars are gone.

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Nice pics!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/17 12:06 by BNSF-6432.

Awesome photos - love the old NWP.

Surprised they had a "local" caboose on that train though; must have gotten short a caboose in Willits somehow.

Great memories. Something we'll never see again.

And the sound was tremendous!

Nice photos and clear use of the red MARS light on the tailing helper as the rear marker. This was common practice until FRA stipulated that only time
the red osculating light could be used was in an emergency.

Regards, Jim Evans

Wow! Awesome. Thanks.

Got to experience that in the later days when Eric Blasko and I went to Fort Bragg and Willits to ride behind the Cal Western ALCO.

We sat outside the Willitts station on a warm evening as the Westbound NWP lumber drag pulled out of town. You could hear the brace of SD9’s working uphill for the next hour. Great memories.

Mike

Posted from iPhone

Great photos of an 'everyday' scene from those days. Thanks for posting.

FiveChime Wrote:
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> Nice photos and clear use of the red MARS light on
> the tailing helper as the rear marker. This was
> common practice until FRA stipulated that only
> time
> the red osculating light could be used was in an
> emergency.

Could the red light be illuminated without oscillating? I remember seeing an ex-Lackawanna E8 one time with the red light lit but the Mar light not moving.

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> Could the red light be illuminated without
> oscillating? I remember seeing an ex-Lackawanna E8
> one time with the red light lit but the Mar light
> not moving.

Not on the SP. The "Run/Inch" switch was for the white oscillating light only.

Howard

I truly wish I could go back in time to NWP's glory days...

Classic NWP!

Holy $#!+ are these cool photos! SD9's on the NWP basically routinely ran within a stones throw away from my house back in the 80's and 90's.

Thanks, Keith. Primo subject matter!

-- Greg

So I'm a little thrown off by this amazing photo. SP's SD9's were rebuilt starting in 1970. And that last throughout the decade, if I got that part right. So here, we have eight rebuilt SD9's all within one year of the program (?). Is this a "what are the odds" thing or did SP swiftly assign a newly minted batch of these to this line right away?

That was the true SP, had to of sounded amazing standing there.

I imagine that train got even longer as it picked up more lumber and general merchandise cars along the way.

Beauties.
JB

The 4346 was out just two months from Sacramento rebuild, the others not too far behind. When they were released from Sacramento they were sent to work out of Roseville and kept an eye on them for a few months, as were all rebuilds. These worked back and forth to Roseville. I remember having to have to go to Oregon in the '70s to find old SD9s!

Keith, did you go to Ft. Bragg too and shoot the California Western Baldwins? Wished I had done that more often!

Peter Arnold

Fizzboy7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So I'm a little thrown off by this amazing photo.
> SP's SD9's were rebuilt starting in 1970. And
> that last throughout the decade, if I got that
> part right. So here, we have eight rebuilt SD9's
> all within one year of the program (?). Is this
> a "what are the odds" thing or did SP swiftly
> assign a newly minted batch of these to this line
> right away?