SP&S 700 Steam Train

[MrChevy]

Shot this out the window while driving down the street this morning (05/15/05). Not a very good shot, but love those steam engines!

Enjoy!

More photos of the train are at http://MrChevy.com/sps700/

No PS done on any of them yet, just used BreezeBrowser Pro to extract/resize/create HTML file. I was hoping to get at least 1 good shot, but it doesn't look like I did :( Maybe next time.

http://MrChevy.com/CRW_0512.jpg

[Tom W]

Always like a good train image. Especially steam!
It looks like the crossing gate didn't seem to be working in a couple of those images.

[mjordan]

I didn't realize they had the 700 out this weekend. I have pictures I took of it when it was out during Christmas last year and stopped at the Portland train station. It's really a photogenic steam engine.

Mike

[RockOne]

Nice photo. Looks like a fairly large train.

[Jim700]

Always like a good train image. Especially steam!
It looks like the crossing gate didn't seem to be working in a couple of those images.

Tom, the crossing gates were working just fine. I'm in a position to know as I'm the one who was running the steamer. What you don't know is that the locomotive was shoving the train. A close examination of the stack exhaust in that series of four photos (at http://mrchevy.com/sps700/) which include the crossing, as well as the following photo, will indicate that the 700 is backing up. Because there are no turning facilities at Salem we had to back up nearly 40 miles to Tigard where we headed forward toward Brooklyn (SE Portland). The Portland & Western Railroad required a diesel-electric locomotive to be on the leading end during the shoving move because they didn't want our steamer running tender-first over the road crossings. Too many accident-chasing money-hungry lawyers nowadays, you know! I realize that your posting was a long time ago but I just discovered it and thought that your crossing gate comment deserved an explanation.

[ajbalazic]

Tom, the crossing gates were working just fine. I'm in a position to know as I'm the one who was running the steamer. What you don't know is that the locomotive was shoving the train. A close examination of the stack exhaust in that series of four photos (at http://mrchevy.com/sps700/) which include the crossing, as well as the following photo, will indicate that the 700 is backing up. Because there are no turning facilities at Salem we had to back up nearly 40 miles to Tigard where we headed forward toward Brooklyn (SE Portland). The Portland & Western Railroad required a diesel-electric locomotive to be on the leading end during the shoving move because they didn't want our steamer running tender-first over the road crossings. Too many accident-chasing money-hungry lawyers nowadays, you know! I realize that your posting was a long time ago but I just discovered it and thought that your crossing gate comment deserved an explanation.

Fascinating! I think this is so cool that the Engineer who was running the steamer found this thread (1st post too!) and was kind enough to give some insight. Hope you stick around- are you into photography too?