On Thursday evening I loaded up my car and then left early on Friday morning, before sunrise. It was July 1st and before sunrise is early for me. I drove for three days, to Montana and then north to Lethbridge, Alberta. From the internet I had a detailed itinerary for the Canadian Pacific Railway and GW Travel Limited that included a July 16th morning runby that would be staged with the CP's Empress 4-6-4 2816 steam engine on the spectacular mile long and 314 feet high Lethbridge trestle. My objective was to find the bridge and then find a location or locations where a staged morning runby could be captured on film. This (N359-14) is not a model train set, it is a westbound CP freight on the very high Lethbridge trestle. I spent the night a few blocks from the east end of the bridge at the Village Inn and in the morning looked at my chosen locations in the morning light.

It was the 4th of July and I was headed west toward Crowsnest Pass and Fort Steele looking for places to shoot the steamer on July 15th. I then headed south into Idaho on route 95 and between Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint caught a BNSF intermodle (N359-24) with rather interesting light. There was cloud cover overhead and the sun, low to the west was shining under the cloud layer putting light on the side of the train and not much more. The symbol on this train was BNSF 919 Z CHCPTL9 04 and the power was BNSF 919, BNSF 8055, NREX 5413 and MRL 260. I spent the night in Spokane, Washington.

On Wednesday, July 6th, the NRHS's Western Star Mainline Steam excursion would be running from Portland, Oregon to Wishram, Washington and return and that would be the start of the convention for me and is the reason that I was headed back south and west. I was headed for Wishram and then would explore to the west for good photo locations for both the east and westbound trips. A grass fire and high winds were ravaging the area near Wishram so I had to backtrack and cross the Columbia River in order to get west of Wishram. The excursion would be run on the BNSF Fallbridge Subdivision which runs on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. There are good photo locations on either side of the river but you have to know where they are, how to get to them and then there is the time factor, you have to get there and get ready to shoot before the train gets there. As the day wore on I found several good photo locations, the last of which was a grade crossing shot at 164th Street, a little east of I-205. In the morning it was overcast and I could hear on the scanner that the train was getting off to a late start. I went further west and looked for a bridge shot location where the train would be crossing the river but I could not get to a suitable location so I went back to 164th Street and a long wait. I shot it there and again just west of Washougal from the overpass on Rt. 14 (N361-01), still overcast. After that I could not get ahead of the train and the sun came out and the sky got blue. At Wishram the entire train was backed out onto a river bridge to wye the train and the SP&S 700 which had been in the lead on the outbound trip was tucked in behind the SP 4449 for the return trip. I did a little better on the return trip with (N361-22) taken at Bingen and then probably my best shot taken near the Bonneville Power Plant (N361-24) with the Sweat Peas in full bloom.

On Thursday, July 7th, the convention had a trip on Port of Tillamook Bay RR that was powered by SD9s. To serve the port the railroad traverses through some very hilly forested area and we were looking at another overcast, not great for photography, day. I have included a shot that I took at Cochran (N360-18) and another taken at Timber (N362-09) on the return trip with a working wig wag crossing signal.

Also on July 7th the convention held their Night Shoot at the Brooklyn Roundhouse with lots of ambient light and many lights in the background. (N360-37) was taken with three locomotives extending out of their open roundhouse bays, the NKP 190, the SP 4449 and the SP&S 700. (N364-01) was taken of the GN 274 and the BASF's Mearsk unit #644.

On July 8th I slept in, did laundry, went to the banquet, ate Columbia River Salmon and enjoyed listening to Doyle McCormack and Steve Lee take verbal jabs at each other and talk about the future of steam railroading.

On Saturday, July 9th, the convention had an excursion on the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railway which is about a two hour drive north of Portland. It is another railroad with lots of forest and steep grades. The town of Morton where, the train would stop to serve lunch to the riders, was the closest point to Portland so I started there and then worked my way north looking for photo locations and listening for the train. I heard the train call Mineral and saw some autos parked beside the road. I looked around and could see a trestle through the trees so I walked into the woods and photographed the train there (N364-10) and then again as it was approaching Morton (N362-18). This excursion was pulled by gear driven locomotives which have a lot of power and a maximum speed of about thirteen miles per hour. The lead engine on the outbound trip was a 1930 Heisler, number 91, former Kinzua Pine Mills (N362-25) and on the return trip, number 10, a 1928 three truck Climax, former Hillcrest Lumber Co. (N364-25). On the return trip I shot (N362-29) as the train was leaving Morton, and again at the trestle which my map maker says is over the Tilton River and then decided to head north again, back toward Canada and the CP 2816 trip. I spent the night at Bellingham, Washington.

Sunday, July 10th. Took Canadian Route 5 to Kamloops and then followed the track east toward Golden looking for places to shoot. At Salmon Arms I stopped at an A&W Root Beer for lunch and had just gotten back into my car when a gray passenger train went by headed west. It was a Rocky Mountain Railways tourist train. I followed it and went east to a photo location that I had spotted earlier at Notch Hill with an old rickety church. I did shoot the RMR train there but I got a much better shot of the 9571 W (N363-11) stack train with the church. I continued on to Kamloops and the next day west to Mission where I found an overhead footbridge that would make a good photo location for shooting the 2816 the next morning.

Tuesday, July 12th, first travel day for the CP 2816 on its return to Calgary. Today's trip from Vancouver to Kamloops was starting out with a heavy overcast in Mission where I was at. I got into position on the footbridge and listened to the dispatcher talk to a Rocky Mountain Railways tourist train about going through Mission and how he might bring them through side by side with the steamer. As the sky brightened up a bit I wondered how lucky could I get, but the RMR train, symbol 610 (N363-21) came through first and then the steamer came into Mission and stopped to let someone off. So I shot it from the footbridge and then again from ground level as the steamer departed. I set up again at Hope, under an overpass with a slight rain falling and lots of wind (N363-36). Shot again just south of Sailor Bar Tunnel (N365-03) with enough light that I put on a polarizing filter. The train made a stop at Ashcroft to service the engine and I went to the edge of town and shot across the river as the train was leaving town (N366-16).

On Wednesday July 13th, Kamloops to Golden, I did get a few good shots but generally speaking there were several times that I parked the car with sunshine, got ready to shoot as the sky clouded over and then as the train approached it started to rain. In the afternoon I met up with Ken Storey who was on the same trip to China that I took last February. Ken is from Vancouver, BC and knew his way around the Rogers Pass area so I followed him to a couple of locations that I never could have found on my own. A few miles east of the pass is a railroad place called Beavermouth where we parked and set up on a heavy wooden bridge that is used by timber hauling trucks. It was there that I met Lance Camp, a good friend of Ken, also from Vancouver and Bob McLaughlin from Connecticut. It was a beautiful scene, water in the foreground, the track running on a notch in a hill and across a bridge with a mountain in the background. Lance, who has been around for a while, explained to us how the track used to follow a creek bed under the bridge that we were standing on and how the railroad had to relocate to a new right of way when the dam was built. In the mean while our beautiful scene turned to crap and it got windy and started to rain. We covered our cameras with plastic bags and waited. We talked about all the crappie shots for the day and how the opportunities kept going sour. Lance said, you want the sun to shine? If I unroll this poncho and put it on the sun will shine. Everyone stood there and looked at him in wait. Lance unrolled the poncho and put it on and immediately a bright spot started to appear in the cloud layer. Within a couple of minutes the sun was burning through rather brightly. We thought the steamer was stopped at Rogers but all of a sudden there it was - click - click- click. We loaded up our gear and started up hill and then saw that the train had stopped and a rainbow was right over the rear car. More click - click - click, I bracketed and shot again, I decided to finish the roll - click - click - click.

Someplace along the way I realized that I was missing a roll of film and I made a note that if I should find an exposed roll of film floating around in the car, I should mark it as roll number 8 or 9. After returning home and having my film processed I found that I had finished a roll, rewound it part way and then got busy driving or was somehow distracted and then double exposed frames 21 through 36, all of the above story.

Without knowing of the above loss, Thursday, July 14 was definitely looking to be a better day. The sky was clear and the train would be headed mostly south, into the sun, (hopefully) from Golden to Fort Steele. As the 2816 pulled out of the station with draincocks open and a mountain in the background it was a beautiful sight (N368-08). I shot nearly a whole roll of film and the 2816 was only a couple miles out of town (N368-20), (N368-22) and (N369-10). I had a lot of good shots that day, here is one taken about two miles north of Radium with nearly the whole train in the frame (N368-34). Another taken at Invermere as the steamer pulled along side the rear helper on a northbound coal train (N370-07) and the shot of the day taken at Canal Flats (N370-11). After arriving at Fort Steele John Biehn and his son Mike and I went to see Fort Steels own little steam railroad with a 2-6-2 numbered 1077 (N369-23) and a lady engineer at the throttle. By that evening the word was out that the Canadian Pacific 2816 would not be going over Crowsnest Pass to Lethbridge, it would go back north to Golden and then east to Calgary.

For Friday, July 14th, I decided that I would leave the 2816 chase and head east and south to begin a slow migration toward home. I had already spent time looking for places to shoot in that area and would spend more time in the Crowsnest Pass area. There was a track crew working in the area but I did get to see a few trains. I went to Lethbridge and then south to the US and spent the night at Shelby, Montana.

In the morning there were clouds to the east and blue sky to the west, so I went west looking for eastbounds and places to shoot with sunshine. At Cutbank I found a nice highbridge and a good place to shoot eastbounds on it so I got set up and waited. I shot several trains there and have included a shot of the Empire Builder (N371-09). By then it was getting cloudy and I was not sure I would have good light but the clouds were very cooperative when Amtrak came by. I headed south and looked around some at Mullen Pass and then into Helena. I spent the night at the Mustang Motel in Townsend, Montana.

The next morning, Sunday, July 17th, as I was leaving the motel there was a headlight coming my way (N371-21). I was heading for Wyoming's open pit coal mining operations and the shared BNSF-UP Orin Sub where more than 60 loaded coal trains per day are shuttled out of the mining area onto other lines either near Gillette on the north or Douglas on the south. There are several huge mines in the area with coal seams that may be more than 100 feet thick. There was a huge rodeo going on in Gillette so I had to go about 50 miles to the east to Upton to find a motel.

On the 18th I spent the whole day looking at trains and mines and then spent the night in Douglas. Here are a couple of shots from the North Rochelle Mine owned by the Triton coal Company. (N372-20) has two trains in a processing and loading area. The coal is hauled from across the road at the left by a huge truck called a jitney. In (N372-18) the huge jitney is in the lower left corner of the photo of a really big dragline. The next photo was taken at Bill (N372-34) and has six trains in the photo. With all those coal trains it was interesting to see a concrete tie train (N372-21). The symbol for the tie train was BNSF 9261 W GILGIL 1 18 and it was powered by BNSF 9261, a SD60M and Santa Fe 153, a GP60M.

On Tuesday, July 19th, I headed north through the coal mining area again and then onto I-90 to head east toward home. I monitor all 100 AAR channels on my scanner and a bit east of Rapid City, SD I heard train chatter so I got off the interstate and found a Dakota Minnesota and Eastern train with about 20 grain cars (N374-06) a few miles west of Exit 78. The lead unit, was an unrepainted ex-CP SD40-3, number 6089 and the second unit was a better looking SD40-2, DM&E 6368 marked "City of Clairmont".

I didn't realize that South Dakota was so big, but on the next day I was still there. I was a bit east of Sioux Falls when off to the south I spotted a train headed east, so I got off the e-way at Corson and doubled back looking for it. I eventually found it on the north side of I-90 working in a siding where the crew was loading sand into their cars. This train had two nicely painted red locomotives but was too far away for details. There was a nice bridge over a small river that gave the potential for a nice shot, so I waited and listened as the train backed further and further away. Eventually, with the power switched to the other end, the train backed out of the siding across the bridge along side of me. It had two Ellis and Eastern GP-10s numbered 27 and 37 (N373-33) and was a good looking train (N374-16). According to my map maker program the bridge in this photo is over Split Rock Creek at Brandon, SD. I wanted to spend a day along the Mississippi River so I headed east and spent the night in Rochester, Minnesota.

Thursday, July 21st. I wanted to find some IC&E or DM&E on the west side of the Mississippi but did not hear a thing on that side of the river so I looked around at Lacrosse, Wisconsin. I did see a couple of trains there but nothing as far as photos goes so I headed south on Rt. 35. I could hear that a 790 South was coming so I found a place to shoot it at Victory, WI (N374-25). BNSF 790 S TCPBPA1 18 with two C44-9Ws looking good and moving right along. I went further south and finally did hear two trains on the west side of the river both headed south toward Dubuque Iowa. I crossed the river at Prairie du Chien and went south. I did see both of these trains but could not get them with a decent photo location. At Dubuque Yard I did get a roster shot of an IC&E GP40-2, number 4203 (N373-37). I spent the night in Dubuque.

Friday, July 22, last day on this trip. I got on I-80 and headed east. I wanted to stop at Butler, Indiana to see how NS was coming along with the new connection that would enable CP to run on the Wabash between Detroit and Chicago. I did see 20M go around the corner on the older connection that was put in right after the Conrail split and the new connection was looking close to being ready except for the signals. I went east into Ohio and north toward the turnpike, but when I got to Edon there sat an Indiana Northeastern train a bit short of the crossing. They had loaded grain and empty coal cars and were headed for Montpelier where they exchange with the NS. It was rather late in the day and the sun was on the rear of the train but here is a roster shot of the lead engine, Larry's Truck and Electric GP30, number 2230 (N376-01).

22 days, 16 rolls of film and more than 8000 miles on my Jeep Liberty.