Cascades Route Question

[choochoodood]

Can someone tell me what the legacy railroad is on the Cascades route from Portland to Seattle? Is it Northern Pacific?

 

[Seaboard92]

It's actually complicated. There is an excellent book on the subject actually "Orphan Road, The Railroad Comes to Seattle." Most of it I believe is EX Northern Pacific, however it was jointly operated in the day by Great Northern, Union Pacific, and Northern Pacific

 

[Willbridge]

The current Cascades route is 10 miles of the SP&S between Portland and Vancouver, then 176 miles of the NP between Vancouver and Seattle. Technically, the route changed direction at Auburn, as the northernmost portion into Seattle was built as a branch. Tacoma was the focus of the NP; the dispatcher was located there.

As the NP was the original line (car-ferried over the Columbia between Goble, OR and Kalama, WN), it usually had the "premier" train in the Pool which was formed after sanity crept into the Hill (BNSF) vs. Harriman (UP) fights. There were several different routings and through-car services involving the UP and GN, but the NP always had the lead. When a special train was run it was normally an NP train.

Until it's last president (Menk) took over, the NP was working on a 3:30 schedule plan for PDX <> SEA service. My father claims to have ridden a steam-powered train that was making up time and did the trip that fast.

 

[Willbridge]

Thanks to a new scanner and old drugstore photo printing, here's the Vancouver SP&S operator handing up orders to the engineer of NP Train 408 (for younger readers an ancestor of Amtrak Train 11). The train is just leaving territory handled by the NP dispatcher in Tacoma and entering the territory handled by the SP&S dispatcher in Portland. The last photo shows the rear brakeman picking up his copy from the dutch door of an SP paint scheme sleeper in the Seattle<>Oakland service. (Cars in that pool were lettered for NP and UP, besides SP.)




Photos taken with a Kodak Bullet 127 camera, which did NOT have an anastigmatic lens and got eight frames on a roll. I couldn't often afford much more processing than that. After a couple of years with that, having demonstrated that I could tell a story with eight frames, my dad found a rebuilt Voigtlaender 35mm with a Zeiss lens and I was off and running.

 

[IndyLions]

Great pictures! Your photo of the block operator brought back memories. In the late 60s & 70s my Dad was a summer vacation replacement block operator for the Penn Central. He worked the old Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad, moving to various locations every week to replace the vacationing block operator.

I would sometimes go to work with him - it was a lonely job. I witnessed many times him typing up his orders in triplicate with carbon paper, attaching them to string on giant “forks” (don’t know what they were really called) and handing them up to the engineer in the locomotive and the conductor on the caboose as the train flew by the depot/tower. They would catch the string with the orders attached with the crook of their elbow as they leaned out the window, as I recall.

 

[railiner]

Great pictures! Your photo of the block operator brought back memories. In the late 60s & 70s my Dad was a summer vacation replacement block operator for the Penn Central. He worked the old Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad, moving to various locations every week to replace the vacationing block operator.

I would sometimes go to work with him - it was a lonely job. I witnessed many times him typing up his orders in triplicate with carbon paper, attaching them to string on giant “forks” (don’t know what they were really called) and handing them up to the engineer in the locomotive and the conductor on the caboose as the train flew by the depot/tower. They would catch the string with the orders attached with the crook of their elbow as they leaned out the window, as I recall.

I've heard them referred to as "hoops", and giving them to the crew as "hooping up" the order's...not sure if exactly the same implement....

 

[Bob Dylan]

I've heard them referred to as "hoops", and giving them to the crew as "hooping up" the order's...not sure if exactly the same implement....

That's what they were called on the SP where my Grandfather was a 40 year hand.

I still remember what a thrill it was when I was a kid to hold it up as the Train approached, and see the Fireman ( ask your Grandfather kids) reach out and snag the Orders as the Train rolled by.

The Stationmaster was also the Telegraph Operator, and I learned Morse Code and how to use the key and copy messages, which led me to becoming a Radioman in the Navy when I made a High Score on the Classification Tests!

Other Stations had fixed pedestals the Hoops were attached to, and the Trainmen snagged them as they rolled by.( usually the Fast Trains).

They also hung Mail pouches on a Hook and the Mail Car workers would snag them as they rolled by @ night.( this was a Small Depot where only certain Trains stopped).

 

[railiner]

That's what they were called on the SP where my Grandfather was a 40 year hand.

I still remember what a thrill it was when I was a kid to hold it up as the Train approached, and see the Fireman ( ask your Grandfather kids) reach out and snag the Orders as the Train rolled by.

The Stationmaster was also the Telegraph Operator, and I learned Morse Code and how to use the key and copy messages, which led me to becoming a Radioman in the Navy when I made a High Score on the Classification Tests!

Other Stations had fixed pedestals the Hoops were attached to, and the Trainmen snagged them as they rolled by.( usually the Fast Trains).

They also hung Mail pouches on a Hook and the Mail Car workers would snag them as they rolled by @ night.( this was a Small Depot where only certain Trains stopped).

I remember those stationary hoops...there were usually two...the upper one for the fireman to grab, and the lower one for the conductor or flagman...

 

[IndyLions]

Thanks for correcting me. As a 5-10 year old - I didn’t know the difference between the fireman and the engineer. If they rode in the locomotive, as far as I was concerned, they were the engineer

 

[Willbridge]

That's what they were called on the SP where my Grandfather was a 40 year hand.

I still remember what a thrill it was when I was a kid to hold it up as the Train approached, and see the Fireman ( ask your Grandfather kids) reach out and snag the Orders as the Train rolled by.

The Stationmaster was also the Telegraph Operator, and I learned Morse Code and how to use the key and copy messages, which led me to becoming a Radioman in the Navy when I made a High Score on the Classification Tests!

Other Stations had fixed pedestals the Hoops were attached to, and the Trainmen snagged them as they rolled by.( usually the Fast Trains).

They also hung Mail pouches on a Hook and the Mail Car workers would snag them as they rolled by @ night.( this was a Small Depot where only certain Trains stopped).

Your application of "civilian acquired skills" in the Navy reminded me that the Army was amazed that I knew all the train station jobs already when I was malassigned to the Rail Transportation Office in Berlin in 1969. It was a militarized version of a 1950's American train station, complete with manual reservation system and so my time waiting around the Vancouver SP&S station paid off!

I did fail to learn Morse code there, as the SP&S had installed a Teletype network. The telegraph system was still operable and the old-timers liked to use it, but I was more interested in the ticket counter, baggage and express rooms. When I first took an interest in it, there were 14 scheduled passenger trains a day through Vancouver, all handling mail and/or express in addition to the passengers.

 

[Willbridge]

They also hung Mail pouches on a Hook and the Mail Car workers would snag them as they rolled by @ night.( this was a Small Depot where only certain Trains stopped).

Bingen-White Salmon, now on the Empire Builder, was one of those places till the (bitter) end on the night of 29 April 1971. Mail was also tossed off at those stations. Years before, a friend of my dad's nearly maimed the Lyle, Washington SP&S operator. The engineer forgot the speed restriction till too late. The green RPO clerk tossed out the mail bag at the right point, but it flew down the platform and the agent had to jump. Now you know why little boys liked to watch the operation. Bingen-White Salmon is bigger now, so they probably have other kinds of excitement.

The Cascades Corridor had an RPO on PDX<>SEA NP407/408, but apparently it was gone before Amtrak was set up. The attached image shows the cancellation of the Pacific Northwest's last run. It was mailed at trainside in Portland and reached me in Berlin in four days, faster than mail airlifted from Portland.

 

[railiner]

Reminds me of newspaper delivery trucks racing around the streets of NYC, and pitching bundles of newspapers off 'on-the-fly' towards newstands...you don't want to get hit by one...

BTW, thanks for your service....

 

[Bob Dylan]

Reminds me of newspaper delivery trucks racing around the streets of NYC, and pitching bundles of newspapers off 'on-the-fly' towards newstands...you don't want to get hit by one...

BTW, thanks for your service....

I forgot about that one, they used to toss bundles of Papers out on the Platform as the Trains rolled by. I remember my Grandfather liked to read the San Antonio "Light" ( now defunct)and I went down on Sunday morning after Breakfast to get his Paper on the Platform from the Paperman.

 

[Willbridge]

Reminds me of newspaper delivery trucks racing around the streets of NYC, and pitching bundles of newspapers off 'on-the-fly' towards newstands...you don't want to get hit by one...

BTW, thanks for your service....

Newspaper distribution is how I got into all this, but in Portland, Oregon we didn't toss papers on the street because the sidewalks were wet. My father was the wholesale newsdealer for out of town papers, academic magazines, tourist oriented books, etc. We had all the air, intercity bus and rail schedules in his home office.