Mark's "Short But Sweet" Look Back to August

"Short But Sweet"

Further August 22nd Shots From Mark

We thank Mark for sending along these great photos and stories from our August 22nd train running session.  The following week would end up being a wet one, so we appreciate the sunshine on this wonderful August morning!  

Just imagine our surprise when Bob brought out this beauty of a diesel...the Santa Fe Warbonnet SD40-2.  We will showcase this image once more in the posting!  For now, we allow it to impress us as the lead photograph of the day!

(Enlarge images by clicking on them and reduce by clicking outside them.)

We arrive to find Paul and Andrew already hard at work...

With Paul moving out of Bell… extra bonus points if you can spot Paul’s coffee mug!!!

We spy our job for today: moving out some full ore cars from the mine.

Bob and Marcel deep in animated discussion (wonderful to see you Bob! and you too, Marcel!)

Andrew is executing some switching work with his lovely, colourful Annie.

Here is our ride for the day:  the MLW White Pass diesel I tried out for the first time at Barry’s just the other day.

We grab a string of empty ore cars to switch out with the full ones in the mine, in true Yukon mountain mining fashion!  Hold on a sec… where’s the caboose?!

This one is of Bob saying “come out, come out, wherever you are!”  LOL :-)

Bob’s absolutely gorgeous SF unit.  Look at that power in the battery:  23.4V!  I’m glad I figured out which is the loco’s road number versus the voltmeter reading.  5200V would be a superpowered loco indeed!  Wouldn’t want to mess around with that beast…

And now we’ve found the caboose… hooray!  The crew was taking a coffee break…. We’re all ready to go!

Oh cool, it’s Grant’s WY&PR consolidation!  What a fortunate meeting of two White Pass locomotives on the IPP&W line today… we’ll have to line them up later!

Here we’ve finished the switching maneuvers at the mine:  loads out, empties in.  Looking mighty fine!  We’re going to have to cut short our trip before any opportunity to turn the loco around, so we simply flip the order of the loco and caboose and prepare to run in reverse back to the ore dock.  That’s ok… happens all the time on real railroads, including the WP&YR.  Love this pic: you could totally imagine yourself in the Yukon or Alaska...

And that cap makes it all complete!  Here’s conductor Ollie, who was shouting out train orders from a distance today...

We find the ore docks occupied by Paul’s train.  That’s ok, let’s shove the ore cars next to the engine house for now (apologies if that’s a bit unorthodox…) as we have a very special meet to hurry to.

Here’s the million dollar photo we’ve been waiting for with anticipation:  A meeting of two White Pass & Yukon Railroad locos - different generations, steam and diesel.  It’s like some modern version of the famous “Last Spike” photo!

The Mike and Marcel (M&M) team with huge smiles as the operate at Peter’s Pond. (I notice I'm sweating as the morning is a rather hot and slightly humid one! - Mike)

Hey, no different than my days growing up in Montreal!  It was humid and muggy there as well!  Hehehe!  (If I grew that beard back it would be all white by now and I could play Santa Claus along the Santa Fe!  Hehehe!)

Thanks, Mark...for sending all but that last crazy photo along.  Loved reading your captions as well!

We need the rains we are experiencing today, so please enjoy a wonderful day indoors!  Mike Hamer, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada