Oregon Joint Line N Scale

[GaryHinshaw]

I love this railroad.  It reeks (in a good way) of the intermountain west.

[coldriver]

I love this railroad.  It reeks (in a good way) of the intermountain west.

Awesome Dean!  You're achieving everything you have set out to do.

thanks so much Gary and Bryan.  I'll be in both of your fair burgs next week, but unfortunately won't have time for layout visits or get-togethers (wedding in Olympia, three days on Vancouver Island, one day in Vancouver proper, one day in Seattle, all with family in tow).  I swear I'll make a proper visit sometime soon though! 

NKalanga - it's actually a Western Pacific chip car.  Suspect some of your observation stems from the "something's not quite right" feel of empty woodchips and lumber loads moving from California to the PNW.  I turned the train on the south end staging loop without properly swapping open forest products loads to head back northbound for the photo.  Was curious if anyone would catch that...

[GaryHinshaw]

71 F and sunny in Vancouver today.     Enjoy!

[nkalanaga]

No, the direction didn't matter, as I've seen empty chip cars going in all directions.  Pasco had a lot of chip cars, with a large paper mill south of town, so they were common, even though we had no trees or sawmills.  I don't know that I've ever seen a WP chip car, though, as they didn't come into Pasco, and I haven't paid much attention to the WP. 

The odd thing was that we also had log cars going through.  Since all of the sawmills I knew in eastern Washington were in forested areas, why would they cut the logs in one forest, then ship them across a desert, to another forest?

California lumber loads weren't uncommon in the Northwest, as California tended to have a different mix of species, and lumber yards stocked wood from all over. 

[nickelplate759]

were the log cars headed to the coast for export?  I remember, for example, ships being loaded with logs in Puget Sound, around the turn of the century (no jokes please about which century that might be...)

[sirenwerks]

The odd thing was that we also had log cars going through.  Since all of the sawmills I knew in eastern Washington were in forested areas, why would they cut the logs in one forest, then ship them across a desert, to another forest?

Because logging remained a transient industry for the longest time, before sustainable forestry came into practice. Numerous mills would open and operate while a forest was dense and they closed one by one as it thinned. Eventually a forest would get so thinned that no mills could be economically sustained, but that didn't stop harvesting of what was left and the logs head out to another locale for processing via rail or truck. Of course, "thin" is kind of a misnomer in modern times, as a forest can be lush but harvesting limits could be in place for a number of reasons or policies can be in place that keep logs from coming out of Federal and State-owned forests.

[nkalanaga]

George:  I doubt it, because they came through one or two at a time, in general merchandise trains.  Besides, the west side has most of the big trees, and I don't know why anyone would want to pay to ship the east (dry) side logs overseas.  I'm sure these were going to an east side mill, probably in the Yakima area, but don't know why.  Oddly, in 21 years, I don't remember ever seeing a log TRUCK in the Tri-Cities, not even an empty one passing through.

Sirenwerks:  By the 1970s most of the Northwest's forests were being managed fairly well, if not "sustainably", by today's standards.  The Northwest loggers figured out in the first part of the 20th century that they HAD to change their ways, or go out of business.  They couldn't "cut and run" because they'd run out of room to run!

Many of Washington's forests are either national forests, or private timberlands, and both are managed for long-term production, although often in different ways.  Even most of the clearcuts are managed, with the idea being to cut them at a rate that allows the trees to regrow as fast as they're cut.  Clearcutting on the east side is environmentally preferable, in many ways, because it mimics the way the forests burn naturally.  It's more controversial on the west (wet) side, because those forests tend to burn less, and in smaller areas.

The big timber companies clearcut their west side holdings, but they're basically "farming" trees.  Plant seedlings, thin them in a couple decades, using the small stuff for whatever can be made from it.  Thin again in a couple more decades, then clearcut the mature trees, and start over.

[sirenwerks]

Oregon is in a slightly different boat though. It has a significantly higher percentage of private (company) lands and the harvested forest Federal lands are equally split between the USFS and BLM (my employer), where the USFS is the big Federal player in Washington. The BLM lands are a mix of revested O&C land grant property, reconveyed Coos Bay Wagon Road grant lands, reclaimed Land Utilization Project lands, and a few other categories and are controlled by a unique set of specific Federal laws. The O&C lands are former Oregon & California RR holdings that were taken back from the O&C/SP by Congress when the railroad refused to distribute them per the land grant agreement and given to the BLM to manage in trust for the people.  As with most Federal land grants, the O&C and CBWR  lands come in the annoying patchwork of plots. The proceeds of harvesting of these lands, which is contracted to private companies, are split between Federal coffers, the State of Oregon, and the 18 counties the land is spread across.

[Jbub]

It's interesting to read these posts about logging in Oregon. We have a fire going on in southern Utah that was spreading at approx 10,000 acres a day for the first 3 or 4 days because of density of the forest, that and a high percentage of dead trees due to a nasty pine beetle infestation. It's now at just over 71,000 acres and 85% contained. The biggest reason for containment is that it had nothing left to burn in the direction it was going. A lot of people were blaming the USFS and BLM for mismanagement, which may have had something to do with the spread but really the guy who decided to burn the weeds around is property with a weed torch... during a long dry spel...l and high temps had  everything to do with it starting.

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5253/

[wazzou]

The USFS and the BLM are certainly not to blame for the cause but they are more than a little culpable for the spread.

[Jbub]

The USFS and the BLM are certainly not to blame for the cause but they are more than a little culpable for the spread.

I totally agree with that and changed my comment to better illustrate that.

Jason

[sirenwerks]

There are more than 70 active wildfires as of today in the west (four more in the east) and fire season's just begun. Between the serious damage the bark beetle has done in the west (creating a dangerous level of fuels in some places that there is no funding from Congress to address); the limited number of wildland firefighters (lots of competition between agencies these days as applicant pools start to dwindle), and the stupidity of people (the proportion of wildland fires caused by humans is growing exponentially) agencies have their hands full.


(This is personal opinion, not that of the BLM or its affiliate agencies) But one of the solutions to the lack of funding problem, to address years of extreme fire suppression, is to let fires burn, clearing out the extra fuels and starting from scratch afterwards. As with all things in a civilization, sometimes there are sacrifices for the greater good. Something people should consider before building that multi-million dollar house on that pristine but removed wooded lot. If we let the problem continue, and communities near forests in the west continue to grow as they are, future fires will be even more catastrophic when they not only tear through the homes on the hillsides but interface with real population density centers.

[GaryHinshaw]

[/drift]  Interesting conversation, but let's return the thread to Dean now.  Maybe he'll post some more photos for us. 

[SSW7771]

Dean, I saw this pic on railpictures.net which made me think of the GN transfer to the O&NE on your layout.
http://www.railpictures.net/photo/623222/

[nkalanaga]

One of only two dynamic-brake equipped SD-9s bought by the GN, 598 and 599, too BN as 6125/26.  The 6125 came to Pasco sometime before 1983 to work the hump yard.  BN 6109 and 6116 arrived in the early 70s, 6109 in simplified green and orange, 6116 in BSB.  They were also repainted sometime in the 70s, and were still there in 1983.

598 and 599 were both originally assigned to southern Oregon.  Why the BN sent 598/6125 to Pasco I have no idea, as the DBs were useless in yard duty.