On the previous day while we were at Kalama, I got talking to a chap Cliff West who came across the river from Rainier in Oregon, to view the passing of 4449.
He informed me that they had street running through the small town by the short line RR. The "Portland & Western" carried logs and finished timber products down to the port of Kalama for shipment overseas.

I asked about train frequency through town and was told there was a couple of runs a day and train times varied between 10am to 1pm.
On arrival at the Hotel in Auburn, we discussed plans for the next day: would we go to one of the preserved Railroads that fans at the Convention were to visit, (from what I remember these tourist pikes were closed to the public while the fans were there) We went with plan B - we will head down to Rainer to get street running, again not all agreed, but!

We rise early and head away to beat rush hour traffic, again we have problems with our navigation system, (thats the human one) but we eventually make it to Route 5 and head south. We note not far out of Tacoma the sidings that are full of double stack cars. One siding, or disused branch, seemed to go on for miles.
We turn off Route 5 and pass through Longview and head up to and onto the Lewis & Clark bridge over the Columbia River.

A mention regarding this Bridge, it was designed by Joseph Strauss, he designed the famous San Francisco landmark the "Golden Gate" bridge.
The "Lewis & Clark" bridge is 8228 ft long, (2.5km ) top of the bridge is 340 ft above the river (104 m) and its main span is 1200 ft long (366m) in its own right it is an impressive structure.
We arrive at Rainier about 10.30 and find the town on two levels, the lower level with a number of business premises with angle parking on both sides of the street.


We drive around looking for possible spots to set up cameras. We settle on a spot beside the El Tapatio Mexican Resturaunt. It's not long before we seem to be attracting attention as a number of the Resturaunt workers are stepping outside to take a look at us and our vehicle. One of the party has visions of a heavily armed worker charging out the door to dispose of the opposition hecking the place out. Yeah right!


Then a large refigerated truck arrives and angle parks blocking our view, the driver is built like a brick Sh!t House and had the looks to go with it. Well maybe we should look for another spot!

Finding a spot a short distance down the street right next to the river, and what seems to be a large pontoon style wharf sitting very low in the water, it's now about 1215 and no sign of any rail movment, although we can see what appears to be an empty log wagon down the end of the steet. Checking it out we see a string of empty log wagons. Well if anything is going to happen it will come up from down the port area. We head for the True Value Hardware store over the road and make some inquiries regarding the trains running through town. We all get variable replies from the staff as to when the train passes along the steet.

We wander back to where we were, and walk down onto the pontoon. The Columbia river is still high from snow melt, and swift flowing. We watch a couple of tugs that were tied up opposite, move off and head over to the other side of the river and move a large ocean going freighter out into the stream then head back over to the dock. These large tugs can also be seen on barge traffic up and down the river.


Time was moving on and we were beginning to believe this was a day that nothing was around, when we hear the whistle coming up from the port area. Then a light engine appears at the end of the sreet moving slowly towards us with frequent blasts on the whistle, not that the locals seemed to take notice, with vehicles ducking and diving in front of the loco.
Cilff West told me he was filming one day when a local came out of the Ol' Pastime Tavern, jumped into his Ute, backed out and hit the local heading down to the port. Jumping out after the collision, he looked at his ute and yelled "Dang it the railroad has just wrecked my truck". Yes have heard it all before.

We set up the video camera and film coming down the street. They couple onto the empties, charge up the air, complete a brake test and with whistle again blowing with short blasts head back down to the port area.
Silence returns and we wonder if this is it for the day.

Our attention was taken by Jeff pointing out a large river boat heading down river towards us, we had seen this vessel on the river near the ."Dalles" we wander down to take a look. She's large, at least 4 stories high and we see she is named the "Queen of the West" She turns towards us, now we know what the large pontoon wharf is for. whoever is in charge of bringing her into docking makes it look so simple. A number of bus'es arrive as they unload passengers, I have a talk to the first mate of the "Queen of the West" and was given info on the river boat and it cruise.

We hear a whistle coming towards us and rush back up to the vehicle and set up our camera gear. We have just made it as the train appears at the bottom of the street and film it heading through. We note that a large number of the log wagons are ex British Columbia Railway. We pack the gear up and head off as we have a long drive back to Auburn.

It was one of those days where there was very little rail activity, but the river activity kept one
interested. Turning off the motorway to our Hotel thinking I'm looking forward to a good feed,  all voices in the vehicle yell in unison RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT oh sh=t thank goodness nothing was coming towards me!
"Just testing you boys to see if know your road rules" as we swing back to the right - and my heart rate starts to drop!

[No train images for this blog - but plenty of video footage !  EJ]