Short photo essay -

Below is a photo I made in about 1986 of US Plywood #11 (a 2-6-6-2T) under steam at Snoqualmie, WA. It was a nice sunny Saturday morning and the locomotive was backing down to the depot for the day's trains. If you see rain drops in the photo, that was actually weather created by the locomotive.

For comparison is the second photo, taken recently. These days the loco is an exhibit at the Snoqualmie depot (part of the Northwest Railway Museum).

There's something very appealing about these articulated logging loco's. Aesthetically, I like them better than the giant articulated machines of the mainline roads. Kind of interesting, too, that these logging loco's outlasted many (most?) of their bigger mainline brothers despite the rough operating terrain of the logging lines, not to mention simpler shop facilities.

A bit of history: According to the website, Mallets in the Tall Timber, the #11 went through five different owners through its operating career between 1926 & 1960. http://loggingmallets.railfan.net/list/ ... smos11.htm

Photos taken by me.

Nice shot of her in action!

So are there any plans to restore it to operation or have they given up on steam?

I'm just a distant observer so don't know anything, Charlie. The NW Railway Museum is a rising star, though, so keep an eye on them! They have a good blog with pretty regular news updates and other interesting stuff, linked here: http://trainmuseum.blogspot.com/

I think the plan is to bring back steam...eventually. There's a lot more to a rail museum than steam locomotives, and it appears the museum is focusing on building much-needed infrastructure first. Yes, I volunteer at the museum, but I'm just on train crew, so don't quote me on anything.

However, FLO is right about the "rising star" part. SP&S coach 218 was used during the recent Day Out With Thomas event. She's still being restored, but it was her first revenue run since the 1940's. Here's a video of her maiden run, giving a good look at the stained glass windows that our very own Marty B. helped to restore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JkJ9gRDvruM

After many years of storing all of their equipment outdoors in the Pacific NorthWET (Rust never sleeps, and moss constantly creeps) they have made some great progress in constructing new buildings for maintaining and displaying a portion their collection.

Here's a link to the Museum's website where you'll find more info:
https://www.trainmuseum.org/index.php/s ... facilities

I haven't been inside them yet, but everything I've heard indicates they're very nice facilities and there is some top notch work being done there. I do not know what, if any, plans they have to resume steam operation.

I have visited the Northwest Railroad Museum a couple of times and had several long talks with their director...

As others have noted, the are a rising star, probably deserving of the the most improved railroad museum in North America. Their new shop and storage buildings are wonderful, they are restoring rolling stock, and they have cleaned up their depot site, going from an unwanted neighbor to a community leader.

Conversations suggest that they will eventually have operable steam, but not for the near future. There are other more pressing issues.

Randy Hees

Richard Anderson has a real knack for getting grants. I don't know what his "batting average" is, and how many proposals he writes, but the end results have been some really nice progress in pretty much every area of the museum.

Speaking of grants, I always laugh about a project I was involved with many years ago. They replaced a timber trestle with a short concrete span.

The construction company I worked for got the project, and we had just been bought out by a new owner. His knowledge of railroads was somewhat lacking, and he wasn't the best manager either. His main approach was "putting out fires" and he usually didn't get involved until it was too late.

Numerous times during the bidding process for the job I kept saying "The bridge is only like 20 feet high, but it's 10 feet away from a 300 foot high cliff! If you drop something, it's gone. If a guy falls off the structure, he's probably going over the cliff..."

So, we got the job, with a nice cheap price. The boss finally goes out to look at the site, comes back and says "Oh my god, it's right next to a giant cliff!!!" I replied "Uh, yeah, I tried to tell you that..." "I thought you were exaggerating." "No, not at all..." "Yeah, I see that..."

Fortunately, we completed the job without any significant problems and no injuries.

Under the "new management" the company lasted about a year before it went broke.

Thanks for all the info! I haven't been there since 1989 when you had to stumble over locomotive parts in waist high weeds to see their collection. Sounds like things have changed a wee bit since that time. It amazed me that they could find the parts to the 2-4-4-2 that went to Oregon.