March 25, 2007



















last updated: 04/01/07


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David.Honan
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Without any pressing work to trap me in the office for the weekend, and with one of the few promising weekend forecasts of the winter being offered, I decided to spend this Saturday photographing trains on BNSF's Stampede and Yakima Valley Subdivisions.

An email from a friend indicated that there would be an eastbound empty grain train departing Auburn in the wee hours, but upon arriving in Ellensburg shortly after sunrise I discovered that the train had already made it over Stampede Pass and was waiting for a new crew to take it to Pasco. I decided to sit around and wait for it to depart, but that plan was interrupted after a half-hour when ATCSMon showed a series of acks from East Easton. Since the dispatcher had lined up an eastbound through Bristol not too long before this happened, I figured another eastbound was on the way...

Bristol, WA I arrived at a spot just east of Bristol and set about preparing my gear for this shot, and only a couple minutes later the eastbound hit the approach to West Bristol. As the sun struggled to break through the clouds, a pair of matched BNSF SD40-2s led B-TACSTA5-24A east along the Yakima River.
Thorp, WA I quickly broke down my setup and raced ahead to another spot just down the road, where I captured the baretable train twisting along the Yakima River a couple miles west of Thorp. The abandoned Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension can be seen running along the opposite bank of the Yakima River in the distance.
Ellensburg, WA In Ellensburg, the baretable train joined the X-KALEME9-24A in waiting for a recrew. Peeking above the industrial buildings are some of the Cascades peaks.

With the two eastbounds clogging up Ellensburg I figured nothing else would be on the move until at least one of these trains left town, so I sat back and enjoyed a book (and an early lunch) until the empty grain train departed a couple hours later.

Wymer, WA BNSF 4077 led a pair of sister General Electric units through the twisting Yakima River Canyon as the clouds considerately avoided obscuring the subject of my photograph.
Hillside, WA Just around the corner from the Roza Dam, the empty grain train is dwarfed by the famous basalt cliffs of the canyon.
Wapato, WA Now free of the sharp curves that mark the Yakima River Canyon, the engineer of the X-KALEME9-24A has the train up to 49mph for the 70-mile run across the Yakima Valley.

I wasn't able to catch up to the head end of the train in the 15 miles between this spot and Toppenish, so I abandoned the chase and headed back towards Yakima to find a shot of the baretable, which had left Ellensburg not too long after the grain train.

Satus, WA I wasn't able to find any shots between Union Gap and Mabton (some 30-odd miles) that particularly pleased me for an early-afternoon eastbound shot, so I settled on one last view of the B-TACSTA5-24A from a hillside near Satus, then followed the train to Prosser in the hopes that it would scare up a westbound.
Byron, WA Sure enough, the dispatcher lined the eastbound into the hole at Kiona and brought the late-running M-PASVBT1-25A west out of Pasco. Having in mind a particular shot west of Mabton and not willing to give that up on the possibility of something towards Kiona, I waited 20 miles to the west in Prosser for the train to get past Kiona before I headed further west. (In restrospect, was a fairly silly decision as I-82 parallels the tracks between Kiona and Prosser. Next time...) I did pause to take this shot at West Byron as the train climbed out of town.
Mabton, WA With the Horse Heaven Hills forming a textured backdrop, the westbound manifest leaves Mabton behind and enters a 24-mile stretch of railroad which contains only one curve.

Although I was quickly able to get ahead of the train, my preference for quality versus quantity resulted in no additional photographs before the tracks turned north at Union Gap, so I said "it is what it is" and headed home.

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