November 23, 2015 01:22PM
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Registered: 16 years ago
Posts: 14,589
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Hello again -
As usual, the displays had been shut down at ten p.m. the night before, and by two or three a.m. on the morning of November 23rd the concessions wagons had been loaded on their flats and the train re-assembled into its traveling configuration. This time S.P.'s centennial SD-40 and two additional "Tunnel Motors" were along as helpers for the long journey from Eugene, Oregon to Reno, Nevada - roughly 500 miles over three mountain passes.
Somewhere along the way I had acquired a Graflex flashgun and several big Press-22 bulbs
; the first shot below shows my first fairly successful attempt at capturing a moving train at night - #4449 exiting the tunnel at the summit of 5,125-foot Willamette Pass, just west of the water and service stop at Crescent Lake. The second one was taken about two hours later as the train approached Chemult, Oregon, where the S.P. and B.N. lines join for the eighty miles or so south to Klamath Falls
:
I made the mistake of stopping too long for lunch while the engine was being serviced in Klamath Falls, and was too far back in the chase pack to get a good shot as the train crossed into California and climbed toward the tunnel just north of Dorris. But luckily for me, most of the pack veered off to follow the train up the grade through Mount Hebron, and I was able to get ahead and set up at Grass Lake, just shy of the day's second 5,100-foot summit on the northwest shoulder of Mount Shasta
:
This next photo was taken from Dunsmuir's small city park at Lookout Point, formerly the location of a small, rustic motel where my family stayed for two or three weeks each summer for several years beginning on July 4th, 1952, when I was just ten years old. I remember watching the big cab-forwards and 2-10-2 "decs" blast upgrade here, and how our little cabin would shake when a three-engine freight charged north in the middle of the night
:
The step at the far right of the insert above is the beginning of a trail that leads down into the canyon, splitting halfway along with the left branch leading to a deep pool in the Sacramento River and the right branch leading to a small but very scenic grotto at Hedge Creek Falls. The trail was heavily overgrown when we first stayed at the motel; I borrowed some tools from the owner and off & on over the next three weeks cleared the brush enough to gain access to the river and the falls. Within two or three years my "discovery" was completely cleared; SFAIK the trail is still maintained for use by visitors to the city park.
A few miles south of Dunsmuir, hub of S.P.'s Shasta Division and once the home of a twenty-four stall roundhouse,* there's a rest stop on the northbound lanes of I-5 that overlooks the railroad and the Sacramento River near Castella, with Mount Shasta - at this point more than 25 miles distant - still dominating the background
:
I again got lucky when the Freedom Train took the siding near LaMoine - another ten miles or so to the south - giving me time to take the dirt road down to Dog Creek and across a small bridge to the pool on the Sacramento River well known to locals where I had learned to swim as a young whipper-snapper more than twenty years before. The passage of the southbound Shasta Daylight in the late afternoon was the signal for my dad to end the day's fishing, hike back upstream, and gather the family for our return to North Dunsmuir, which – back before I-5, when Highway 99 still crossed this concrete arch bridge and was mostly just two lanes – could take well over an hour from Dog Creek
:
Both the railroad and the highway were relocated when Shasta Dam was built in the late 1940's, and are close together at only a couple of locations from Lakehead (just south of Dog Creek) to Redding. In any event, I was now well behind the chase pack and didn't see the train again before dark. I finally collapsed in the back of my VW van somewhere between Chico and Roseville, and didn't catch up to the train until long after it had crossed 7,000'-plus Donner Pass in the Sierras during the middle of the night and arrived in Sparks, Nevada - just east of Reno - the following day.
(To Be Continued.)
-
Roosso
* See Dr. Robert Church's book,
'Steam Days in Dunsmuir',** for an excellent account of railroading on S.P.'s Shasta Division. Bob is several years younger than the JéBêWèX, and only about two years older than me; his personal memories of Dunsmuir closely parallel my own.
** See [
ngdiscussion.net] for a brief summary.
Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2022 08:14PM by Russo Loco.
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