# Portland mini-gathering



## CHamilton (Aug 11, 2012)

A beautiful Saturday morning in Seattle, and a great day to take a train trip....as always! King Street Station's cramped temporary layout hasn't changed much since I was there a few weeks ago, but they're still tweaking signage and procedures. The lines for ticketing stretched into the hall, and I imagine there were some folks who thought I was queue-jumping, but I was just going to the business class checkin.

It looks like I might not have needed to check in, though, since the counter folks just printed me an "e-ticket" on the old ticket stock, and gave me the old-style sticker with my seat assignment. But when I got to the waiting area, the conductors seemed surprised that I already had a seat, and were obviously prepared to assign one there.

But they started boarding 501 earlier than usual, apparently because we were leaving from track 5. It looked like 510 was on track 4, and track 3 was taken up by a several-car train of BNSF business cars, including #1, #60, #63, and #65. Those last were called "Raton Pass" and "Stevens Pass" -- I didn't catch all the names.

Track 6 had Pacific Sands and an unnamed open-platform observation car with the LA Railcar herald on the back. All in all, a busy morning in SEA! I've posted a few pics on Facebook, and will add links here when I can.

Despite the busy-ness, 501 left on time, and we had a friendly and talkative conductor that I've encountered before. As we went by, he noted that ground had been broken for the new Tukwila station, although there isn't much to see yet except a few piles of dirt and some construction equipment.

Lots of people got on at Tacoma, and we're now running along the Tacoma Narrows, but it's very foggy here, so we can't even see the bridge. But the forecast is for sun and temps in the mid-80s, so it should be a good weekend.

Unfortunately, we've had some cancellations, so it's likely to be a micro-gathering. But we should have fun nonetheless. If any locals (sorry, no expresses!) want to join us later today or tomorrow, you are still welcome. Just PM me to find out where we are.


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## CHamilton (Aug 11, 2012)

Pictures here.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3870179667824.154331.1078582262&type=3&l=a2a5ea7746


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## Bob Dylan (Aug 11, 2012)

:hi: Charlie: Sorry I can't be there to join ya'll in Sunny Portland!  Fixing to catch #421 for LAX, it arrived into DAL EARLY today, so hoping it'll make AUS in time for Dinner in the Diner on the way to SAS! Hope yall have a blast, it's not the number but the Spirit that counts when it comes to Friends!  Hope to see you in PHL for the Gathering in Oct.!


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## CHamilton (Aug 12, 2012)

Jim, thanks! Hope you had a great dinner. And yes, I plan to be in PHL for the big Gathering.

We have indeed been having a blast. I arrived at PDX Union Station on 501 a few minutes early(!). Peter KG6LSE and a friend of his who's not in AU (but ought to be) met me there. Peter had arrived on 500 from EUG behind loco 470, the King Tut special; his friend lives here.

We spent most of the afternoon having long discussions about trains and other interests that we share. Our conversations moved from the station to the MAX train to my hotel room to an outdoor lunch at Elephants (formerly Violetta) in Director Park, where we got to watch an interesting dance performance, but really, we spent more time enumerating the various models of MAX cars as they went by. We were only slightly foamy...

Not surprisingly, we found that our mutual non-train interests tend to be on the geeky side, too, from engineering to education to radio to science fiction to computers. One of the nice things about AU is that it tends to attract smart, knowledgeable, friendly and slightly eccentric types!

After lunch, we did some shopping in downtown Portland, since I needed to replace my quickly-dying cellphone. From reading Whooz's last report, it sounds like cellphones dying while traveling may be more widespread than I imagined! Peter has solved the problem by stocking up on Palm Centros (a surprising choice, perhaps, but available for cheap, apparently). But Peter also owns three Apple Newtons, so he obviously appreciates good old technology, some of which is older than he is!

We parted ways so that they could do more shopping, and I spent a few hours setting up the new phone. But we'll be getting together again tomorrow, and our micro-gathering is definitely off to great start!


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## Alice (Aug 12, 2012)

I think your observation car is Tioga Pass. He puts different heralds on the back depending on the event. Glad you had a good time and sorry I wasn't able to get up.


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## CHamilton (Aug 12, 2012)

Alice said:


> I think your observation car is Tioga Pass. He puts different heralds on the back depending on the event. Glad you had a good time and sorry I wasn't able to get up.


Alice, thanks for the suggestion. The one I saw certainly had a similar design, but I didn't see any yellow stripes. [EDIT: Actually, it did, but they're more like pinstripes than the wide stripes shown in the picture you link to.] It may have just had a new paint job, since it looked quite clean and shiny. I posted a pic on the Facebook link above. You don't need to be a FB user to get to it.Sorry you couldn't make it. See you in PHL!


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## GG-1 (Aug 12, 2012)

Aloha

Nice pictures.

Eric


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## CHamilton (Aug 13, 2012)

Day 2 of the micro-gathering started slowly, as I had been up late the previous evening reconfiguring the new cellphone. But traffic and the MAX were pretty disrupted anyway because of the Bridge Pedal. But I did get in a MAX run before meeting up with Peter and his friend again for a lunch that turned into a three-hour gabfest about everything imaginable. It was pretty hot, at least by Portland standards, and all three of us can only do a limited amount of walking at the best of times. So we decided to take the MAX Red Line to the airport -- which is, I think, the only piece of the MAX that I hadn't been on yet.

Because of the heat and humidity, it was hazy enough that we could just barely see the mountains, but MAX really does have some nice views. Here's a pic I took back in May, on National Train Day.







I am always impressed by how heavily used MAX is, and by people of every age and stripe. We saw the most impressive Mohawk I've seen in years. And later in the day, on my way back from the hotel where I had dropped my luggage, a woman struggled to get on the train because her bike was laden with six(!) boxes of bookshelves to be put together.

But we got back to PDX Union Station in good time, only to find that the station was a real zoo. Peter was going to be going southbound on 507, and I was going north on 508, both of which were scheduled to depart at 6:15. But 28 hadn't left yet, and it finally did so an hour late.

Then, 507 was late arriving due to a brush fire which apparently closed the tracks somewhere between Kelso and Vancouver, WA. So Peter didn't get underway until 6:35, and 508 didn't leave PDX until 7:05.

PDX Union Station is beautiful, but its acoustics are awful, so it's hard to hear announcements. It also has no electronic status boards, and I believe that only the Metropolitan Lounge is air conditioned. So put a bunch of hot, confused people together, and it wasn't much fun. Of course, SEA King Street is like that too, but they have the excuse of major renovations.

Luckily, 508 didn't lose any more time, even though we could smell the brush fire as we went by (although I didn't see it). We got into SEA shortly before 11. I guess the cabs had given up on us, since there were none to be had outside King Street, but they must have put out the call, because a bunch arrived in a couple of minutes.

But all in all, it was a great weekend. I didn't take very many pictures, but there are a few at the link above. I'm sure that Peter will post some. I'm sorry that more people couldn't join us, but I hope to see more folks in PHL!


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## CHamilton (Aug 13, 2012)

Alice said:


> I think your observation car is Tioga Pass. He puts different heralds on the back depending on the event. Glad you had a good time and sorry I wasn't able to get up.


Yes, it *was* Tioga Pass. Here's a nice pic posted to Facebook by my friends at Olympia/Lacey station.


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