Train Scene 2017

By Bob Campbell

Experience the rail excitement throughout the entire year of 2017 through almost 200 full color images covering every month of the year, along with detailed snippets and visual trips throughout the Pacific Northwest including:
Locomotive Makes and Models identified in every shot;
Livery Parade reviewing some of the varied colors passing in front of the camera lens - plus a more detailed look at the variations BNSF provides all-by-itself as it continues to integrate the ATSF and BN color into the corporate fold, plus a couple cool Union Pacific (UP) livery catches;
Visits to -
Powerland Heritage Park
Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation Center;
A couple Bridges and the local turntable seeing action;
Vancouver Center BNSF Yard Power review;
Fright and Rolling Stock;
and finally a quick set of low-light / night images (as we tick out of room in allowable images in one ebook);
Along with that monthly visual breakdown of how we experienced rail traffic on our local BNSF / Burlington Northern Santa Fe Vancouver Center yard and maintenance system.
Whether you're a scale train modeler or an armchair railfan, this collection aims to fill any railroad void your life might be lacking in remembering 2017.
Come along with this massive set of images and enjoy the track-side views you might have missed (without getting your feet wet, nose frozen, or face sunburned - well, maybe not really that last one, but unlike many years, this was the one where you ran the risk, that's for sure).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Campbell
• Release date: Mar 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370599875

Bob Campbell

The short of it: over-educated, unemployed, and annoying with a camera. Quite possibly a dangerous combination.The long of it:I've been snapping pictures for over a quarter-of-a-century on equipment ranging from a Pentax k1000 to Canon SX700hs - but nothing fancier. In fact, after they retired my Kodachrome 64 film, I hung up the 'real cameras' and settled for "digital pocket snappers." It seems ninety percent of the challenge to taking pictures is to remember your camera (would seem obvious, wouldn't it? But look around at the folks with large, fancy cameras - no wonder they claim the phone-based lens will be the death of real photography). So I do my part and pack it almost everywhere.I was a latecomer to photography, though, so I had time to grow up in many different parts of the country with my formative stage in the South, but junior high and onward in the Pacific Northwest. The last set of initials after my name tacked on by the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine - making the 'highest degree attained' line of the survey read Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.I still live in the state of Washington with my lovely wife of over two decades who continues to be an invaluable accomplice. For any hazard I manage to avoid, our son does his best to ensure we'll see an early grave.Having spent a little time teaching, I've grown to miss a captive audience to inflict my photography upon, so thank you Smashwords for providing me a forum for dispersing my imagery pain to be loosed upon the world.

Book preview

General Text Organization

Because you're probably here more for the trains and less to read whatever drivel I dribble onto the page, I've tried to make it easy for you to cut out some of my endless droning. Below each picture, the narrative will go on needlessly (possibly without you... or me, if we're being honest with each other); but after that will be a parenthetical area with more factual and pertinent information to the picture (which if you want to be cool, we're vaguely doing this like the medical profession SOAP style records: Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan - where the S is vaguely open to interpretation and not easily measured by any metrics or numbers, while the O is the undeniable facts (like train registry numbers, date, and location - better known as TPR - just kidding. Because TPR is Temperature, Pulse, and Respiration (not Train, Period, and Region, contrary to the nearly obvious: Cool! That almost makes sense!) - which in this book I cover in the unparentetical section where I'll complain about the temperature, my pulse rate having raced to get into position to take the picture, and whether I need supplemental / resuscitory oxygen to stay conscious) - then you get to provide the Assessment (Geez Louise! I can't believe I'm actually reading both sections!) and provide an appropriate Plan for the future (Darn-It-All. Next picture I won't read that first section. But I probably should look for another one of this guy's books - he needs all the help he can get. (Well, possibly not the second part of that plan, but I certainly wouldn't complain). (BNSF 4389(C44-9W) northbound orange pumpkin special - Schneider container double-stack consist- curving along the Vancouver Amtrak Station center platform extension between the two north-south Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) main tracks that run from our end of Washington here on the south all the way up to the north at the Canadian border, where a few hundred miles away, the other Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) sits a handful of miles further up the I-5 corridor. Although this particular train likely has the Port of Seattle-Tacoma as a more likely destination in another few hours. July 23, 2017, Vancouver, WA)

Safety

As always, if this collection of images from the railways and by-ways of our wanderings has lit the fire of rail photography under your butt and you've got camera in hand and ready to shoot some live action: do so responsibly and safely. Respect railway right-of-way, private property, and stay off the tracks. Modern day welded rail on Class I steel is far more silent than you'd expect, especially coupled with all the noises of everyday life... and especially Mother Nature (it's never a question of if someone will die along the BNSF railway trackage in our area, but when the first one will happen, and if it will stay in single digits in any given year: and it's not the railroad's fault. Trying to 'swerve' to avoid an ignorant person trespassing on the railroad track is almost as likely to work as 'putting on the brakes' to stop in time (given a loaded mile-plus of freight at typical train speed limits on most trackage and you'll be lucky if you can still see the pusher locomotive past the point where emergency stop is initiated). So use your zoom / long lens and always stay behind the appropriate barricades and safety barriers. (PNWR 2005(GP38-3) pulling out a short block of center-beam flat cars with cut lumber, April 4, 2017, Philomath, OR)

Introduction

It was taking me forever to finish the 2016 train year in review... if forever to you includes a couple years after it was over, because the calendar flipped to 2019 and I was still buried in 2016 according to the unfinished book... the first three sections as a matter of fact. So in a blinding flash of brilliance (or possibly a minor brain infarct or mini-stroke - I'm not sure - or possibly the sun popped out for a couple minutes in the middle of the January clouds and fog - weather, not mental - although with this run-on sentence, you could argue both), I figured I'd get 2018 done if nothing else - skipping 2016 and 2017 - only I'd use the easy way out and just skip the creative (aka annoying) efforts to create various entertaining sections and topics for the year: instead, just hashing it out in month-by-month format, so you could just live life by the rails throughout the year. Any remaining images could be squeezed in with a few quick general topical swipes and irritating (to the reader) commentary, and I was bumping against the book-size ceiling imposed by the publisher (which I fully appreciate as its expanded now so I can often include nearly 200 relatively good quality (ha ha! I'm laughing with y'all - because quality here doesn't refer to my photographic ability, but digital rendition quality; but I can still put it all in the same sentence (if not the same sentience) - I produced good quality images for these books. (200 dpi... where we can pretend it stands for dazzling picture indeed and not dots-per-inch)). Long and boring story only slightly shorter: it worked well. Especially since nobody is really here to read these long-winded discourses. Which means I get to try to catch up this year, because somehow 2018's book came to pass relatively painlessly (and because I'm quickly trying to write this introduction as soon after the Railway Scene 2018 book has been released so I can get it written before I get complaints about my lack of linearity). (BNSF 5455(C44-9W) lead unit on northbound consist crossing under 39th Street over-pass on the new yard by-pass lane around the three main yards of Vancouver Center, while SPU BNSF 8407(SD70ACe) the lone pusher on a northbound covered hopper unit consist pauses on the western main of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe's double-tracked north-south mains that run from Vancouver up to the Canadian border (at the other Vancouver in British Columbia, October 29, 2017, Vancouver, WA)

So, once again, without further doo (BS), enjoy the year 2017 of trains and scenes in and around the Pacific Northwest. (Powerland Heritage Park - Steam Engine Extravaganza, Yardmaster's Office, July 29, 2017, Brooks, OR)

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: Table of Contents :

January

Brisk and cool... but sunny! Not a drop of rain - what a