Remarks: Stan Patterson is at the controls, rolling a mere 1mph down Whitman Street. Slowing to cross over HY27, he lays on the music while watching carefully for cars. Behind the little geep are 2 empty centerbeams. Today's 18 mile, 2 hour journey will take them to Bennett Lumber for loading.
Take a look at the W&I's street trackage on Google Maps (pre-improvements and new tracks installed summer 2008):
http://bit.ly/4yqkdt
Remarks: The light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, an approaching train: In less than a second, a westbound will emerge from the darkness of Cascade Tunnel into the gloom of a twilit evening. The heat contained in the exhausted gases which pour out of the tunnel with and after each train is evident from the amount of snow that has been melted off the tracks outside the portal.
Remarks: It's just another winter night on the former Great Northern mainline as a meet is made at Scenic. The crew of westbound Z-CHCSSE1-12A is happy to have successfully completed another trip through the 7.8-mile Cascade Tunnel; as they approach the top of the 2.2% descent to Skykomish, the exhaust from their passage pours out of the bore and catches the headlights of an empty grain train stopped in the siding beyond the US 2 overpass. After a quick flush, it'll be the eastbound's turn to pass through the hole in the earth some 1,500 feet below the pass located in 1889 by, and later named for, the civil engineer John Stevens.
