I was driving home from Medford, OR this morning, kinda keeping an eye out for things I overlooked last year while visiting the Dunsmuir, CA UP/SP yard. I stopped at a railroad park where they converted cabooses into motel rooms. Here is an SP Cabooses painted to look like a BN unit. To the north is this volcano cinder cone called Black Butte: And to the Northeast is this giant volcano, Shasta: Both are considered dormant but who really knows. They are sure pretty though!
One of the most picturesque areas in California for railfans. Castle Crags in your first shot is a great background, as is Mt. Shasta. A stay in a caboose at the Railroad Inn is a super experience. They are very well done inside. I don't know if the diner is still in operation, but it was excellent a few years ago. :tb-biggrin:
Whats that old falling apart piece of rail equipment in your first shot? Maybe an old flanger of sorts? Standard or narrow guage? Got any pics of that?
I was coming back from the National Z Scale Convention in Medford, where a friend had displayed a Z-Bend Track module of Castle Crags, so I had to stop and take a few shots to see for myself. Here's as good of a picture as I took of that flanger thing: I think it's narrow gauge. They also have a shay but my picture came out too blurry.
Thank for the shot! Yeah, looks like some type of flanger. The shay you mention is ex Medford Corporation or "Medco".
FYI, Shasta last had a major eruption around 1800-1810 and it was I believe seen from a ship off the California coast. What always surprises me more than the Railroad is the fact that I5 runs right next to Black Butte. That's what I call tempting fate. Of course the entire city of Portland is built on a Volcano, so perhaps the I5 strech isn't such a big deal. SP's entire Cascade line technically runs around Volcanos and even the Sisikyous were originally formed partially by volcanic activity. And of course, the UP route through the Columbia River Gorge goes right past Mt. Hood. When I was living in SoCal, I thought it was funny that nobody down there even knew Mt. Shasta (or Lake Shasta existed). To them, the state ends at SanFran or maybe Tahoe.
When I wuz a kid my mom & I rode the SP "Daylight" from L.A. to San Francisco and then again from Oakland to Portland. We rode the "Shasta Daylight" between that last pair of cities. That part was still in steam. We had a "Daylight" type 4-8-4 with a non-streamlined helper for part of the trip. That was a fantastic ride, both of them! One of the S.P's most famous dishes on their dining car menu was their "Help Yourself" salad bowl. What most folks probably didn't realize is that the fresh veggies they were chowing down on were growing in those fields outside the dining car windows just a few hours before!! Got to see the famous AC cab-forwards and ride streetcars and the P.E in L.A. Also rode trolleys and the cable cars in San Francisco. To this day San Francisco is one of my most favorite places on earth, the same opinion is shared by my wife. Charlie
I know a UP conductor who works that vicinity. He's always monitoring seismic activity around the region. It's quite active, most likely the days are counting down until another nasty burp from some mountain in that area. Boxcab E50
Well, the sisters are rising something like a few feet a year. It is going to go. Rainier and Hood are both overdo.
I don't know. Volcanoes erupt now and then, but it's not like we get rivers of molten lava coming down our streets every other week. Portland has some extinct volcanoes within the city limits. I don't know what volcano you're talking about, John.
Mine too! Born and raised in Nebraska before I moved out here, the first time I visited San Francisco with my parents I was about 14 or 15, we ended up on a cable car late Sunday night. It seemed like there was no other soul in sight. I was watching the operator, being more interested in how the cable cars worked, than watching the sights go by. Next thing I knew, the operator was talking me through procedures as he had me operate the car for about 5-6 blocks. Anyways, thats not really connected to volcanoes along the SP/UP tracks in any possible way. But oh well, I felt like sharing.
It's the Boring Lava Field and I guess it's extinct. I didn't realize that. Boring Lava Field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia As for the eruptions. I drove up to Mt. St. Helens once. The view north even now some 30 years later is...moving to say the least. I'd hate for Shasta to erupt similarly towards the southwest. In fact Portland is probably lucky Helens erupted to the North. Portland and Seattle would be reasonably protected from Hood and Rainier respectively as far as the initial wave of destruction, but The mudslides and such coming down the rivers would be the worry for both. Sisters isn't much of a worry for any of the major cities. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities as well, but I don't know if I'd be willing to put up with the cost of living. San Diego was expensive too, but Coastal North County had some reasonable prices here and there. San Fran would have been longer commutes with similar prices, but fewer amenities. I find Portland to be a great place to live. It has some of the feel of San Francisco along with a bit of the feel of the midwest along with it's own PacNW sensibilities. A great place to live.
Don't forget Mt. Lassen, still somewhat active. Last major eruption 1914 - 1917, with a really big one in 1915.
I am personally more concerned about the strong likelihood of a big subduction earthquake in the Pacific Northwest during my lifetime. Volcanoes are spectacular, for sure, but most of us don't live close enough to get it. Even if St. Helens had blasted toward Portland the shockwave wouldn't have hit us. The people who got killed were almost to a person in the blast zone, and I think there were some drownings in the Toutle River area as well.
Oh yeah, I have a friend who studies ocean currents, Waves, all that down in Santa Barbara and she was telling me, the "big one" isn't going to be on the San Andreas Fault in California, it's going to be along the Plate that follows the coast from Alaska down to California. But it's like I told my friends in San Diego a couple weeks ago during the Mexicali quake. I've yet to find a "Safe" place to live. If it isn't earth quakes and Volcanos (Yellowstone will doom us all) then it's tornados and Hurricanes which happen more frequently. Or as another friend of my from SoCal said to me Earthquakes are the price you pay to live in Paradise...The same could be said for Volcanos and the pacific northwest.
That's not true at all! As a native Southern Californian, I totally know there's a Mt. Shasta. I mean, it was named after the soda, right?
Portland is also one of my favorite places on earth! I spent a lot of happy times during my childhood there. My mom & I visited her friends there several times. I was able to ride the Portland Traction a few times. I have a few b/w photos I took. The people we visited lived in S.E.Portland and just down the hill from them was the S.P. and adjacent to those tracks was the Portland Traction. I used to go down there & train watch. Charlie
Did Mc Cloud have narrow gauge track? I did not get any closer to that flanger as I was more interested in the SP cabooses made into motel rooms, but it looks kinda narrow from the photo's. Why I found it interesting about seeing tracks so close to these volcanoes is one of the guys in our modular club built a volcano module, and at first there were people opposed to the idea, crying NON PROTOTYPICAL, and that he should not build it. It was a joint project between him and his 7 year old son, and turned out to be such a crowd pleaser at the 2008 NTS, that it won the IHC Pizzaz Award! Now I can tell him it is prototypical after all.
See, I told you southern californians don't know about Mount Shasta. You should get those guys around of Black Butte Porter to drink and be all. Hey, know where black butte is? RIGHT NEXT TO THE RAILROAD TRACKS!
