Clover Valley Lumber #4 and the "Burning of Rome". At just above every charter, we'll get one photographer who gets really grumpy after a run-by that features an almost completely clean stack. Hey, most of us do like a little smoke to remind the viewers of our photos that this is indeed a steam engine, and a smoke plume is one of the things that makes these machines spectacular. Unfortunately, a radio call to the crew for "MORE SMOKE" is invariably met with a bit of an over-reaction, and the result is typically what you see here. On the very next run-by, the fireman will be over-firing so heavily that massive flashes of fire are visible below the fire pan, and the plume is dense and black. Legendary photographers Beebe & Clegg used to call it "The Burning of Rome" and they wanted their pictures to look like this. So in their memory, we'll dedicate this one to Lucius and Charles.
Scenes of Clover Valley Lumber Company #4 and Columbia River Belt Line Railway #7 in action with freight and log trains, on a portion of the original Transcontinental Railroad.
