A Meet at Moody

BNSF VBCBAR at Moody, Oregon - August 2003

BNSF trains meet at Moody, Oregon - August 2003

BNSF 765 DPU on the VBCBAR at Moody, Oregon - August 2003

BNSF 4371 lining the switch at Moody, Oregon - August 2003

Next up, getting across the Columbia River.

Union Pacific runs the Edmonton/Roseville train to handle its Canadian traffic to the Golden State, the BNSF runs the Vancouver B.C./Barstow.  A hallmark of the train is center beams full of packaged lumber and Procor tank cars. The train though, also gets a substantial fill at Vancouver, Wa., and this includes imported coil steel  out of the sintering plant at Kalama.

Coil Steel cars on the VBCBAR at Moody, Oregon - August 2003

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Steel coils in the open air at Steelscape in Kalama, Washington. Steel arrives by ship from overseas, and gets treated as per customer specs here, then gets loaded on to coil steel cars for distribution. This plant has had a bunch of different owners over the years, changing hands as much as a paper mill.

Beware of Basalt!

UP Bend Local on the Oregon Trunk at Trout Creek - 1997

Oregon is pretty much made up of basalt.  As igneous rocks go, basalt has a higher concentration of iron versus silica, and that makes it dense and also sharp when it fractures. In the photo above, you can see the road below the trestle. Getting this shot requires a climb up a fractured basalt rock fall. All was going great up till the last few feet where the rocks got much bigger, and also less stable. I stepped on one that wobbled sharply under my weight. Of course, in these kind of situations the railfan's first impulse is to protect your camera, and not your body. Down I went, and got a nasty little contusion on my leg that took weeks to heal.