On Sunday, while everyone was getting pre-drinking for the Super Bowl, Smartz and I checked out the Model Train Show at the Evergreen Fair Grounds in Monroe.

I’m again becoming quite the little railfan, and even though I had a small train layout when I was a kid, I never really got too into model railroading. However, since I like trains, I figured that I’d enjoy myself at the train show.

Turns out, I did.

I took tons of pics, trying to get Smartz’s camera to co-operate with macro-close up shot – only a handful turned out as anything interesting.

Check them out, if you like…

Click here!

RR by James Benning, which played on Wednesday night at Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum, on one hand is simply a movie that takes 43 static shots of trains and puts them together into a 111 minute movie. On the other hand, it’s a study of landscape and consumption – our “need” to have so many things shipped across the continent. Though mostly, it’s about trains.

I had never been to the Forum before and I was (prejudicially) expecting an artsy, stuffy crowd. I was a little wrong here, though maybe not at first. The crowd numbered roughly 100 and seemed to have a mix of normals (probably here for the trains), stuffy artsy types and filmmakers. There was also one fairly obnoxious guy wearing a safety vest. He asked if this was where the 8 o’clock showing of a train movie was. I figured he was ironically asking. He made another comment about hobby shops.

After a very short introduction by a nice filmfan fellow, RR started. Like any good movie, the credits were short. A simply black screen with the letters: RR and then we began. A shot set up on a bit of grass buffering a street from the tracks. A train heads towards us and we watch, with the camera untouched, unmoving, as the train passes. Before the sound fades, we hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

This is our movie. Most shots start before you can see the train. Most end after the train leaves the frame, but before the natural sound is allowed to return. Each episode is separated by a silent black screen lasting three or four seconds.

Our second shot is from Bagdad, California, a place that I’ve been to several times. The train now moves away from us. The third very slowly crosses a bridge in Tennessee. A fish pops its head out of the water towards the end of the train. The forth is at a crossing in Minnesota. A car comes into frame.

By the fifth episode, six or seven people had left.

Even for a railfan, this isn’t a very easy movie to watch. Most railfan movies have a few shots of the same train, and while the edits aren’t really what you’d call quick, they cover it from several angles. Narration often explains where the train in, the percent of the grade, what kind of engine is pulling the load and often what contents make up the consist. Each scene fades to the next and sometimes has goofy swipes and silly transitions. Also, too often really amazingly bad synthesizer music complete with fake drums and guitar provide the always unwanted soundtrack.

While that doesn’t make good art, it makes up your typical railfan documentary. RR is in many ways the opposite of that. Benning’s movie simply watches the trains go by, just like you did when you were a kid, just like I do now. I have no idea what the train is pulling or which engine is being used and thankfully that crappy synth music isn’t stuck in my head.

By the time the 10th episode, a shot of a cement coal tower in West Virginia, rolled around 15 people had left.

What caught my eye was just how varied the shots of trains could be. Each shot began before you could even hear the diesel engines. In some, you couldn’t even see the tracks. The shots were always beautifully composed. Benning, like any good photographer, has an eye for such things. The camera angles were not “weird,” but interesting. The trains themselves varied widely from shot to shot, but his choice of distance from the tracks, angles and seasons (he shot year-round) made each episode very different from the last.

His use of added sound was also interesting. I mentioned the Mormon choir, but he also added a baseball game (Nolan Ryan’s no hitter vs. Toronto in 1991), a Huey helicopter from Vietnam, Gregory Peck reading from Revelations, Karen Carpenter singing a very sad Coke commercial and Eisenhower’s farewell address. All of them are added in post-production, but done so in a way that makes them feel natural, like the trainspotter is somehow listening to them on the radio in his truck. For the most part, it worked.

The Tehachapi Loop shot where the train is moving away from you into a tunnel only to appear crossing over itself was beautiful. I saw a still image of this scene before watching the movie and thought that he could have found a much better angle to shoot from. But I stand very corrected. This shot was brilliant. By the time it ended a few more people had left.

Filming and watching RR can be neatly summed up into one shot. It is a desert scene in Amboy, California (again, a place I’ve visited several times). The shot starts with three empty tracks. Before long, a train carrying cars speeds past and away from us. We watch as it passes. Just as the rear of the train enters the shot, we see a black and orange BNSF engine appear and speed towards us on the tracks farthest from the camera. It is a tanker train carrying oil. This seems beautifully choreographed and timed perfectly. But, of course, it’s not. It’s just luck. This is a very rare shot. Benning explains:

The one that’s in the film where they actually passed is in Amboy, California. That was a very hot day, and I didn’t want to sit and wait for a train, so I drove down the line until I met a train, and then I drove like 90 miles an hour back down Route 66 to Amboy, and I set up. But the train I was waiting for that I was racing to catch got caught by a red light. All of a sudden a train started coming from another side. So I thought, okay, maybe I should start shooting that train, or should I wait for the first one, and then I got real anxious not knowing what to do so I just turned the camera on. And that train turned out to be the one hauling automobiles with these Auto-Max cars that are made especially for SUVs—the huge white cars—and it went flying by, and just as it’s ending, the other one showed up.

The perfect alignment of two trains, one carrying cars away from us, the other carrying oil towards us is not only fun to watch, but say something about our culture – shipping cars east and oil west. This shot was intruded upon by a van carrying a railroad worker. The van drives towards and then past us. A minute later, unseen, a worker gets out and passes between the train and the camera. For a second we (and probably Benning) figured that this amazing shot would be ruined by this guy telling us to get out of there, we’re trespassing. But he just walks on buy and waits for the train to leave so he can cross the tracks.

That, in a neat little nutshell is our film. Trains coming and going carrying things that we really don’t need across a gorgeous landscape. Like the railroad employee, we have to stop and wait for these trains to go by. While we’re waiting there’s not much else to do but watch.

By the end of this shot, 22 people had left the theater. That’s nearly a quarter.

A movie such as RR, just a succession of 43 shots of trains, must end somehow. Our last shot is in Palm Springs. Large white wind turbines share the background with a brown desert mountain. The foreground is dotted with old, thrown away tires. A train enters slowly from the right and grinds even slower through the frame until it comes to a complete halt. The camera holds us there for another very long minute, leaving us to wait for something, even the sound of the train’s brakes releasing, that never comes.

The film ends with a black screen and the initials JB. That is all.

There was a discussion after the movie moderated by the same gentleman that introduced it. The folks who stayed were mostly filmmakers. A railfan or two stayed and then obnoxious guy in the safety vest was there too. He wasn’t being ironic as I had previously thought, he was just a little crazy. Nice guy though. He knew a lot about trains and railfanning. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The discussion bordered on “too artsy” for me, but thankfully stayed enough in the practical area. I even added a few comments (mostly about the shooting and locations and about the added sounds – I had done my research before watching). Of course, a few of the comments offered some lofty interpretations that seemed to want to see more than was there – and when those comments became the norm, we left with a great impression of the film and a pretty good impression of the discussion before it headed too far south.

For me, the most important thing about this movie, or about any work of art, is how it makes you feel. The best art makes you want to create art yourself. James Benning’s RR makes me want to hop on my Vespa with a good camera and film trains. There are some things I’d do differently, of course. I’m no James Benning. But the experience would be amazing.

When art makes you want to experience what is on the screen or canvas, etc., that is good art (maybe the only art). RR isn’t something to just look at. It isn’t even something to look at think about. It’s a catalyst. If only I had a year of freedom and a camera! I already have the love of train and a mental list of locations where I’d shoot.

Benning does not release his movies on DVD. RR will never be able to be seen outside of a theater. If I have one critique, it is that. Not that this should be mass distributed all over the globe or even to railfans reading Trains Magazine. But it should be seen. I count myself as extremely fortunate to have seen it. And I wish you could too.

Maybe, in a few years, that’s where I’ll come in.

For more reading on this, there’s a great interview with him here. Also, a location list, written by Benning, is here. That is where I got the pictures for this post.

It’s not often that you see mention of Lewisburg or any of the Buffalo Valley of Central Pennsylvania noted in a publication. Even books covering the entire state usually leave out the area where I grew up. True, there’s not much to see there. Not much of wide historical value happened there. Sure, we produced a Civil War colonel, but he was killed at the start of the first battle. And I think he was probably from Milton anyway.

So when I came across this picture in the most recent issue of Trains magazine, at first I didn’t recognize where it was. But hey! It’s Lewisburg!

West Shore Railroad SW1 No. 8525 and Conrail GP10 No. 7554 exchange greetings at Lewisburg, PA on Feb. 4, 1987. West Shore acquired the ex-Pennsylvania Mifflinburg Branch in 1983, interchanging with Conrail at Lewisburg, where and ex-Reading line to Williamsport, Pa crossed. The Mifflinburg Branch was abandoned in 2008, and will be turned into a trail.

I saw the Conrail engine in its “Bright Future” blue all through my childhood. The West Shore Railroad rain a small freight line from Lewisburg to Mifflinburg. I think they were somehow part of the North Shore Railroad out of Northumberland (which has some of the best painted engines I’ve ever seen).

This picture, as most folks from Lewisburg can tell, was taken on the corner of 5th and St. John – where the two lines crossed. It was taken by a fellow named H.E. Brouse (I can’t find any info on him, if anyone knows anything, would love to hear it).

The line that the Conrail is on ran from Williamsport to Sunbury (and beyond), crossing the Susquehanna near Ted’s Landing. It was owned by the Reading Railroad. The West Shore train is occupying old Pennsylvania Railroad tracks that ran from Lewisburg to Bellefont. This was originally the Lewisburg & Tyrone Railroad – it included the two tunnels by Poe Valley and Coburn.

Here’s a map that might help…

Conrail, a huge railway, connected to the rest of the world via Sunbury (and south to Harrisburg). West Shore had a connection via Milton, I think. There’s a bridge there.

These days, the line that Conrail used through Lewisburg is owned by North Shore Railroad (and operated by the Union County Industrial Railroad – I think West Shore became this line). The line that the West Shore train is using in this photo is gone. You can still see the RR Crossing signs painted on a few Lewisburg streets at St. John (Front Street, for example). The old bridge that crossed the Susquehanna is still there. The line that ran to Mifflinburg is being turned into a Rails-to-Trails (at the outlandish cost of nearly $4 million dollars!). The rest of the line towards State College is accessible here and there – some of it is Rails-to-Trails.

The Conrail engine pictured here, GP10 No. 7554, started out in 1956 as a GP9 on the New York Central Railroad. After the NY Central and Pennsylvania RR joined to form Penn Central and after that went under and formed Conrail (long story short), it was rebuilt to a GP10. Sometime after this picture was taken, it was sold to Penn Eastern Rail Lines near Lancaster where it still bears its blue color and the same number . There are pictures of it here.

West Shore’s locomotive, the SW1 No. 8525, is a bit of a mystery. It was first owned by the Pennsylvania RR in the 40s and then by Conrail, who sold it to the West Shore RR when they started up in 1983. But after that, I have no idea. North Shore RR probably had some hand in it at some point (since the Union County Industrial RR controlled the West Shore Railroad). They seem to have had a few SW1s. Maybe it’s still in their roster. I wonder who I’d ask. Here are three other pictures of No. 8525 from the mid 80s in Mifflinburg.

I also wonder why I care so much about this kind of stuff. Maybe it’s because when you focus on specific things like a single tiny engine, you can learn about the big picture too – the rail lines, the mergers, the strikes, the towns the lines went through, etc. But while you’re learning about the big picture, you’re also able to connect it locally. Sometimes it can be as local as the corner of 5th and St. John Streets in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

While skimming Netflix for decent Railroad documentaries (hint: there aren’t many), I came across a four volume series called Running a Steam Locomotive. Sounds like a lot of fun, no? I’ve always wanted to learn how to do this.

I know that you really can’t learn to run a steam engine from a DVD, but I figured it would give me a good basis. Turns out that I was right.

The first thing that I noticed about this DVD is that it’s a rerelease. Running a Steam Locomotive was originally filmed in 1980. The guy who looks like a hipster was a dead giveaway. This blond fellow with big glasses, mustache and questionable hat seems like he was taken right off of Capitol Hill, here in Seattle. But no, this guy wasn’t being ironic, he was just being who he was.

The program starts off oddly. I figured that since disc one was the basics, it would start with an overview of the engine. Nope, it starts off with how to change out a broken flue pipe inside the boiler. You start out inside the engine itself. It’s sort of like showing up on the first day and the boss doesn’t have time to teach you how to blow the whistle or start the engine because there’s a flue pipe that needs to be replaced using some special tools.

It’s an odd way to start, but kind of fitting and I found it interesting. You’re in the boiler with the engineer, Charles Daigh, and while he’s fixing the piece, he’s explaining why it needs to be replaced and covers a lot of how a steam engine works. Tom Scott, Jr., the fireman proto-hipster and engineer take turns covering different areas of the locomotive. It’s all a bit scattershot, but all useful.

Nearly every aspect of running a locomotive is covered: from starting up the fire (start it with wood and some kero) to warming up the cylinders to starting up and coupling the cars. Along the way, you learn about basic wheel alignment (what 2-6-2 means, for example), the suspension, electrical system, valves, regulators, lubrication and what the whistle signals mean (two long bursts means that the train is about to move – two longs, one short and another long means that the train is coming up to a crossing).

The railroad where this was filmed must have hosted a “How to Run a Steam Locomotive” class. At times, the engineer seems to be talking to other people rather than the camera. He also uses the tender (coal car behind the engine) as a chalk board. Pretty nifty.

One of the things that I really appreciate about this is that there’s no amazingly bad music accompanying it. Many, many train documentaries are filled from start to finish with insipid, canned Casio keyboard music. Generally, the soundtracks are embarrassingly horrifying and relentless. Thankfully, this chose to have almost no music in it. The music that existed was done by a jug band (over the opening and closing credits). This is probably because it was filmed in 1980. Somewhere around 1984, everyone and the brother got a Casio keyboard and decided that they were going to make music for crappy documentaries. Sadly, as far as train documentaries go, this is the rule rather than the exception.

This documentary was filmed at the Monticello & Sangamon Valley Railroad in Illinois. Now, it’s called the Monticello Railway Museum. The locomotive used in the film is their No. 1, a 1930 0-4-0 built by Alco. It ran until 1988. Monticello’s current roster features no working steam locomotives, but a few fine older diesels.

Anyway, if you’re interesting in this sort of thing, I guess this will interest you. It’s fairly technical and maybe a little dry, but very well done (by 1980’s standards – even by today’s standards) and very informative.

The DVDs in the rest of the set seem to be from different places. I’m not sure if it’s the same film company that did the original, but I’ll soon find out.

After watching everything an engineer on a steam locomotive has to do, I’m kind of glad that I’m not one. It all seems like a huge pain. The fireman, even though he’s got to shovel the coal and keep the fire going, has the better of the two jobs. I think I’d rather be a fireman.

Yesterday morning, I got a message from Ryan asking if I wanted to head down with them to Seattle Center (where the Space Needle lives) to check out the train layout and, apparently, the cold. Of course, I said “sure!”

He picked me up and wound our way down Aurora Ave to the Worlds Fair Grounds. We parked across the street from Bamboo Gardens, walked around a parking garage and across 5th Street. Ryan had Arkaedi stuffed in backpack and Taviri was spazzing out a few paces behind us.

In the park, there’s a water fountain that’s a gigantic crater with a huge metal ball in it. The metal ball fountains the water, though mostly in summer. Arkaedi saw it first and pointed, saying “ball! ball! ball!” We peeked over the crater’s edge to stare in awe at the ball ball ball.

Though the temperature was 45, it was a bit chillier than I had anticipated. I was only wearing a hoodie. Arkaedi and I were the only ones with hats.

After the ball, we went inside one of the old Fair buildings. They’ve turned it into a huge foodcourt minus the mall. It’s got strange things strewn about the place, including a huge chunk of the Berlin Wall. This is where the train layout was.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m all for trains. As far as model trains go, I’m more into the HO scale. Even the Lionel scale is quite nice. This layout was larger than that, however, it was very well done. Congratulations, Seattle!

The set up was a town from maybe the 1920s with a fire hall, a theater, blacksmith shop and many Norman Rockwell kinds of homes. Several trains, all old locomotives, run through the town, over bridges and through inexplicable tunnels.

Having quite a bit of the train, the kids sat down, Arkaedi in a pink chair and Taviri in a blue one. Arkaedi made sure that we all knew that she was in a pink chair and “baba” (brother? Bubba?) had blue.

Also in the foodcourt was a giant Christmas tree. As we walked the kids over, we got several very pleased nods from “progressive” Seattleites who thought we were a gay couple. If they only knew.

At the Christmas Tree, Taviri told me about his own Christmas tree while Arkaedi told me about the blue birds on the tree in front of us. She then became a cat, dropped to all fours and began meowing. This tickled a few folks around us, but held us up a bit.

What were we late for? We were late for heartbreak.

Another part of this park is the carousel. Being a two year old girl, Arkaedi loves horses. As we approached the carousel, she giggled and said “nay! nay! nay!!” But she was too small to ride, so while Ryan took Taviri, I got to hang out with Arkaedi, who was very seriously not happy about this. I picked her up in my arms so she could get a better view.

“Baba ride.” she says to me.

“Yep, Baba’s riding the horse.” I reply.

“Me ride?” she asks.

“Well… let’s just watch Baba ride,” I said trying to avoid what I knew what coming.

She paused for a bit and looked at me, just a little sad. “Me ride…. Me ride?”

“Look! It’s Papa and Baba! Wave to them!” What else could I say here?

“No… down.” She was serious now. I was clearly to blame for this.

“You want me to put you down?”

“Hmph!” When she says “hmph!” you’ve been cut off. She really means it.

So I put her down beside me. She was this close to crying. I gave her a little hug and stayed on her level.
I asked her if she wanted me to pick her up again.

She very sadly answered, “No.”

“Do you want to hold my hand?”

“No.”

“Well… how about my finger?” (Sometimes she’s ok with that.)

“No.”

She was still very close to tears, so I ask, “Did I break your heart?”

“…. No.” She had to think about it.

“Can I stay here and talk to you?”

More thought and then, “….. yeah.”

Ryan and Taviri exited the ride and she was clearly heartbroken that I was so mean that I didn’t let her ride on the horses.

Ryan carried Arkaedi who was now scowling at me. Taviri was spazzing around us and when I looked to see exactly where, I saw him going for a couple of very used cigarettes in a nasty ashtray. I shout out to him “Oh no! Tavari! That’s nasty! It’s like… poop! Don’t touch it!”

I usually don’t raise my voice (because, you know, why would I have to?), so Taviri suddenly got shy and really sad that I “yelled.” He wouldn’t talk to me, either. He wasn’t mad, but just too sad to talk.

So there you go, I broke two warm little hearts in a matter of minutes.

By the time we got to the car, Taviri was fine with me, but Arkaedi was still not thrilled. I talked to her a little bit and finally got a high five out of her. She wouldn’t give me a hug, but a high five means I’m once again on the road to her good graces.

I guess this was my Christmas outing. Good friends and trains, heartbreak and high fives – that about sums it up.

Yesterday we braved the 14 degrees temperatures and visited the chilly town of Leavenworth, Washington. We’ve been there several times before, but not when it was Christmas time.

Along the way, we hit old road alignments and saw the same train in several places. I was pretty stoked.

You can check out all the pictures here.

March 9th, 1987 began as a routine day for Canandian National Railway engineer, Wesley MacDonald. His job for the day was to switch what he thought was 23 cars loaded ore cars at the Brunswick Mine. Due to a mixup in communication, he received 31 fully loaded up cars. As he pulled those 31 loaded cars behind two engines and began his dissent from the mountain, his brakes gave way due to the extra weight.

Through it all, he remained fairly calm. As the train reached 55mph, then 60, then 70 Wesley knew that he couldn’t make a quickly-approaching bend in the tracks. He contemplated jumping, but chose to stick with the train so that he could sound the horn to warn those up ahead.

He was less than a year from retirement.

It begins as the train’s conductor (still back at the mine) radios to Alfie, the dispatcher, “I think we may have a knee-deep situation on our hands. We’ve grabbed a bunch of cars back here at the mines and uh, we can’t hold them, she’s weighing on us there.”

Wesley himself radios in to give his assessment of the situation. “This is Wesley now. 50, she’s doing 50, and I’ve got no control of her…. An awful goddamn mixup if I ever can survive it.”

The train quickly reaches 70mph when the dispatcher asks Wesley, “is there no way that you can clear… get off of that train for the love of heavens?”

“I can’t get off her,” replies Wesley.

The dispatcher suggests that Wesley bail into a snowbank, but his conductor urges him to “stay with her,” though he adds “you’ll never make that corner.”

Wes concedes, “I don’t know which is worse.” Being so close to retirement, he adds, “When I get done with this they can put me on my fucking pension.”

The train, moving faster than 70mph miraculously makes it around the first corner. The next station has been warned, but Wes drives home the point, radioing, “Get the hell out of the way.”

As the dispatcher calls for an ambulance, Wesley’s radio goes dead.

“Are you on here Wesley?” The dispatcher has lost communication with the train.

The Assistant Superintendent radios in asking if he has communication with the train and that when they find him that nothing should be moved. The railroad is already trying to preserve the evidence, “Tell him I don’t want anything to move when he comes to a stop.”

Alfie responds, “Well… I… If he comes through that switch at Nepisiguit, Ben, I don’t imagine … er … I imagine he’s at a stop alright, in the woods somewhere.”

As railway workers reach the switch, they see that the train has derailed. The whole thing is lying on its side. But where is Wes?

—-

The audio of the communication between the engineer and the dispatcher, Alfie, (along with several others) has been preserved.

You can listen here:

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And down it here.

The transcript of the recording is here. I’ve found that reading along with the recording helps to understand exactly what’s going on.

In the comments section, I’ll add the conclusion of this crazy bit of railroad history.