Nostalgia & History > BN 810 @ Bellingham, Wa; March, 1974

BN 810 leads southbound train 137 through Bellingham, Washington on a spring afternoon in March, 1974

Jonathan Fischer
West Seattle, WA

---

---

---

Great shots, but I'm trying to figure out exactly where this is in Bellingham?

Very nice F-Unit action photos.
Thanks for the posting.
ALLEN

Great stuff!  Thank you for sharing

Where would this location be today

kcmbha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Where would this location be today

South of the Pine Street crossing, near the GP Am Fab warehouse https://goo.gl/maps/79DkX1HPB8n7oJLb9

The track in the foreground is  MILW.

Everything in the picture but the main track and the hillside is gone.

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kcmbha Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Where would this location be today
>
> South of the Pine Street crossing, near the GP Am
> Fab warehouse
> https://goo.gl/maps/79DkX1HPB8n7oJLb9
>
> The track in the foreground is  MILW.

...which, in combination with the MILW caboose in Bellingham picture brought back memory of the night that the same switch crew made a little mistake.

The AmFab track was inside the building. It held 8 cars. There was an exterior wall at the end of the track. Switching AmFab was a simple move. Pull the loads into a clear track in the yard, get behind the track of eight empties and shove them into the warehouse to a spot. The field man stayed in the warehouse to watch the shove to a spot. The pin puller rode the point of the track to the road crossing, dropped off and caught the engine. When they were spotted, the field man got on the engine and they went back to the yard.

Well, one night, they got involved in some heavy thinking as they were sometimes wont to do. At the end of the previous move, the field man walked from the bottom of the yard to AmFab lining the switches then went into the warehouse looking for the Coke machine. The foreman lost track of what he was doing, forgot that he hadn't pulled the loads (which the engineer and pin puller forgot too) tied on to the empties and shoved...and shoved...and shoved...hit the loads still in the warehouse...and shoved one of them through the wall before they stopped.

The field man found the Coke machine by the way.

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kcmbha Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Where would this location be today
>
> South of the Pine Street crossing, near the GP Am
> Fab warehouse
> https://goo.gl/maps/79DkX1HPB8n7oJLb9
>
> The track in the foreground is  MILW.
>
> Everything in the picture but the main track and
> the hillside is gone.
>
> TAW

Thanks Tom.  I thought I recognized the warehouse.  In later years known as "the Drydock" as that's where AA and NA had their meetings.

I didn't realize the MILW crossed over the BN there south of Pine St.  Even by '82, when I got to B'ham, that was mostly gone.

Cool shots. I was in Bellingham this past September to catch the Alaska Marine Highway ferry north, didn't have a lot of time to explore. Would have loved to have seen a bit of the old Milw right of way. Pretty quiet train wise, but BNSF ran a southbound empty hopper train just as our ferry cast off allowing for a nice "on the water" photo perch.

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH