An Outing

Sorry about the radio silence – boy, once you stop posting, the longer you wait the harder it is to start up again!

OK, so I’ll just pretend I wasn’t gone.  Let’s see, what do I have?

Ah! Pictures of an adventure!

Last weekend I was invited to go on a special train ride. The Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad brought two of their engines (one a newly refurbished historic steam engine, and one historic diesel engine), and a few passenger cars, down to Tacoma, Washington for a model train show. They gave 45 minute rides on Saturday and Sunday, and then on Sunday afternoon they had a special excursion. We were to ride the train out of Tacoma, on Tacoma Rail tracks (so it was a ride you’d never get to see otherwise, basically!), and up the mountain to Eatonville. We would then bus back to Tacoma while the train went the rest of the way home to Mineral. The trip should take about 3 hours total, we were told.

We were to leave Tacoma at 3:30pm and be bck home at 7pm.

I got off the bus in Tacoma from the ride home at 10pm.

I had originally told some folks afterwards that it took “EIGHT HOURS!” but that was because I factored in the time to get to/from Tacoma and home base (my parents’ house, closer to Tacoma than mine). And that wasn’t the train’s fault! So ‘only’ 6 hours of cold rainy wet fun!

I have to say, it really was a great adventure. Much more of a story to tell than the original trip would have been, really!

We started out late due to having to wait for a Tacoma Rail ‘pilot’ to join us, and their shift started half hour after we were supposed to have originally left. Oops!  I spent my time checking out the city skyline from the open car, getting soaked by the wind-driven rain. Brrrr! My friend Mr. Cow, the brakeman on the train, passed me in the car and said “oh, I forgot to tell you to bring a blanket!” THANKS, Mr. Cow. Thanks, ya bum.

There’s the LeMay car museum being built:

 

(it's the half-dome building - I'm not sure why it's shaped like that, what the story is behind the design)

 

A favorite bridge of mine in Tacoma:

The Tacoma Dome:

 

Then yay! We’re off! Huzzah!  Steamy steam steam!

I took quite a few videos of steam, and chug chug chug train noise, and bell and whistles, and the countryside. As it was a very moist day, the steam clung together in the air for far longer than expected. It made quite a sight – I can’t imagine what drivers thought as we passed under highway bridges! You’re driving along and suddenly a huge white cloud of “smoke” comes out from under the highway?!? Hee!

 

 

After about an hour we stopped for more water, from a tank car left there on the way down a few days before. A generator was used to pump water through a hose (like a fire truck hose) from the tank car to the train’s water tank. Then the engine disconnected from us, grabbed the tank car, and connected us up to the back of the tank car. The whole thing took about a half hour, maybe even more. So, more delay. We didn’t mind – we passengers were happily chatting, taking pictures, stretching our legs. Avoiding the rain, talking train.

Here’s the engine connecting back up with us:

 

And we’re off again! Huzzah!

 

More steam, more countryside, more crossings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most cows we came across just stared at us, but the horses used us as an excuse to kick up their heels and run with us. Goats ran scared, chickens FREAKED OUT (though one was so ginormously rotund that it could barely waddle away – how did that thing not get picked off by a fox in the twilight woods?!), horses said WOO HOO!

 

 

 

And then our first disaster struck. We came around a bend in the tracks and the brakes slammed on. We braced ourselves and rode to a rackety rattling screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching stop. Experienced train folk said “THAT was an emergency stop! What’s wrong?!”

This is what’s wrong:

Yup, trees on the tracks. Those were just a few of them. Unfortunately there’s no chain saw on the train (normally there is but they figured these rails, belonging to a professional rail company, wouldn't have issues! ha!) – but there’s a fire axe, and the steam engine used to be used for logging! So it will all be taken care of.  We were disconnected from the steam engine and the diesel pulled us back around the bend so as to give the workers maneuvering space. When the trees were chopped up a bit more, they chained them up to the engine and pulled them backwards off the track. Of course, all this took quite some time. We sat and waited, chatting and taking pictures and waving to the people at the crossing near us.

 

Then we hooked up and took off again! Huzzah!

 

After about another half hour, disaster strikes again!

We’re told there’s water over the tracks. It isn’t deep, but the issue is that the water could have moved the ballast (gravel & rocks etc) under the railroad ties, and moved the rails or made them unstable. This could derail the train – hurting the train, hurting passengers, etc. Very bad stuff. So the conductor got out and walked the track, inspecting a tie at a time, and we followed at a snail’s pace. If it hadn’t been so serious an issue I would have chuckled – I could just imagine this as an animated cartoon, with a very slow waltz playing as man and train did a slow snail dance down the rails.

 

I got pictures and videos of the water – one side of the train was high, behind a levee, another was low and running slow. The water wanted to go from one to the other – and take everything with it in its path!

 

 

 

After about half an hour or so of this, he hopped back on and we took off again! Huzzah!

 

After a while, disaster strikes again! We ground to another halt at a crossing.  I’m still not sure why – no one in our car actually knew what was going on.  But the Tacoma Rail pilots got out, folks waiting at the crossing chatted with us through the open windows, and we waited a bit more.  At least it wasn’t actually disaster striking, just a wee delay. Perhaps they were inspecting the engine after the water session.

Then we were off again! Huzzah!

I took a few more steam and countryside videos, we had fun dodging the overgrown branches,

 

And then – well, I’ll let you guess what I will say next. You have one guess. Go!

 

You’re right! I was going to say, “And then disaster strikes again!”

The train ground to a shuddering, rattling, racketing, screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching halt. Ahead of us up the track are fallen trees AND landslides, blocking the tracks and not anything that our train crew could clean up immediately.  We were stuck!

You can just see a wee bit of the dark green tree in the steam from the engine.

Well, not REALLY stuck. We could go backwards.  After much discussion among the crew, the bus that should take us home, and Tacoma Rail, we chugged backwards to the last crossing we’d stopped at. After some back and forth, they had the train actually blocking the crossing – but that was the only way to ensure we exited the train on solid ground.

So we sat and waited for the bus to join us. The skies darkened and the rain came down harder while the wind picked up.

And then across the valley, we saw our rescue – The BUS! Woo!

But then – I know, I know – disaster strikes again! Between us and the bus is a flooded road. Before the bus can go through, a car must go first and discover the depth.

After ascertaining that the bus would survive a wetting, the driver backed it across the valley and up to the train.

 

We disembarked in the last of the daylight, thanked the train workers for an interesting train trip, boarded the bus, and we were off again! Huzzah!

Thank goodness, the bus trip back to Tacoma was uneventful.  I called my ride when we were part-way down the mountain and met them as I got off the bus. I hadn’t eaten since about 10am and it was after 10pm by this time. Add to that I was soaked to the skin, cold, wind-blown, stiff and sore and worst of all my socks were wet … so when we got to my parent’s house I opted for comfort food.  Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup with crackers, grilled cheese, and a big glass of milk. Ah, a childhood meal at the parents’ house, such cozy memories.

I’m not sure why I was so stiff and sore – perhaps all the balancing and bracing of one’s self in the open train car. We never got very fast, the track is not rated for more than 15 miles per hour, and the one little steam engine couldn’t do much more than that anyway. I believe 12 mph was the fastest we got to on the trip.

The staff on the train were all helpful and pleasant and so wanted us to have a good time – it wasn’t their fault a three hour cruise – er, I mean, three hour train trip – turned into an adventure.  (For those who didn’t grow up in the USA, that’s a line from the theme song to Gilligan’s Island, an horrific TV show that I used to be unable to turn away from even though it was so very very bad)

That night they left the train near the crossing, locked it down, and a couple staff members spent the night sleeping on the train. Next day, Tacoma Rail sent out a crew, and by the end of the day the steam train had made it all the way back home.

You can ride the steam train yourself, on their own lovely track (not on these borrowed hardly-ever-used, in-a-floodplain tracks we dashed ourselves against) up on Mount Rainier here in Washington State. Their website is http://mrsr.com/

 

Comments

[katyboo1]

Wow! That was an epic journey. My kids would have loved it for the first hour and then gone insane, and consequently driven everyone else insane. I do like steam trains though. We have a couple of steam train stations and lines near us and we go on them at least once a year. I love the smell and the noise. Am glad you didn't get washed away.x

[Ivo Beutler]

Wow... the real steamer itself! Not a lot of people have the opportunity to ride a train like you did. And I can very much see your enthusiasm with the number of shots you took! How different did it feel from the subway?