Re: Pupmobiles on the Seward Peninsula Railroad

Thanks for the link to the Blue Mountain stack installation. In the picture the stack looks fully intact, but that isn't the way I remember it.. It was made by a retired Hanford sheet metal worker who built it in his garage. In December 1994 the Blue Mountain was taken off it's flatcar and trucked to Walla Walla in the middle of the night and off-loaded on to a short piece of track at the Baker Boyer bank for a one-month display. Mr. Baker was the founder of the bank and also the original owner of the Blue Mountain engine and the Walla Walla & Columbia River Railroad. There was some unspoken hope that the bank would help with the financing of the restoration project but I am not aware of any assistance as a result of the display at the bank.

At the time the engine had a straight stack. Sometime during the 1-month display the diamond stack was brought up from Pasco to replace the straight stack, but never secured on a permanent basis. The engine was then to be hauled to Moses Lake for display at "Heritage 95" with the diamond stack removed and hauled separately. Well that didn't happen. The people hauling the engine left the diamond stack on, and en route the stack fell off into the opposite traffic lane. Luckily that heavy stack didn't hit a car going the other way, or there could have been some really serious consequences. The stack was bent up and it's builder didn't make repairs. So maybe the Walla Walla volunteers repaired it, as it looks good in the picture. Well this is only a small part of the Blue Mountain story that is continuing.

The display before the diamond stack installation





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2019 10:52PM by Olaf Rasmussen.