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December 28th dawned a typical wet winter day in western Washington State, the kind with wind driven rain, low dark clouds, and a dampness that wouldn’t go away. Oblivious to the weather, I headed towards Ostrander, WA with the goal of capturing the Weyerhaeuser “Woods Train” crossing the trestle over Evergreen Rd. By the 11:15am arrival of the train at Ostrander the rain had stopped but the clouds remained. To make this photograph work I would need to expose just right to bring out the shadows around the trestle without over exposing the clouds lingering around the mountain above.
For me, this trestle brings all the aspects of Weyerhaeuser’s Woods train operation together in one place. Its location, in rural Ostrander, puts the railroad in a community that relies on the forest industry for survival. Its setting amongst the trees and the Cascade foothills speaks to Weyerhaeuser’s ownership and stewardship of surrounding land, and the trestle’s construction speaks of the dominance of lumber in Washington State.
This location also demonstrates why a railroad like this remains successful in 2005 despite corporate streamlining. The wooden trestle could easily have been replaced with steel bridge or a fill, but why when lumber is so prevalent and inexpensive here? The locomotives pulling this train are not the latest high horsepower, computer controlled locomotives but are instead an eclectic group of SW-1500s and GP7s acquired from many different sources. Why spend money for latest and greatest when the tried and true works just fine? In this era when corporate efficiency dictates most decisions, this railroad is an example of how efficient steel wheel on steel rail really is.
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