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Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow
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By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)
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A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.
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Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.
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Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You
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The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera
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Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.
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Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.
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...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.
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A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.
VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.
Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.
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The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes
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Monday, November 6, 2006
Review: Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser's Vail-McDonald Operation
Labels: Book Reviews, History, New Books, Railroads, Transportation
Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser's Vail-McDonald Operation
By Frank W. Telewski & Scott D. Barrett. Oso Publishing Company, P.O. Box 1249, Hamilton, MT 59840; www.osorail.com; 9 x 11.5 in; hardcover; 354 pages, 371 b/w photos, 10 illustrations, 65 maps; $49.95
Logging railroads seem like a thing of the distant past. Mention them to someone and most won't even know what you are talking about, but the few who do will probably conjure up images of teakettle steam engines hauling Paul Bunyan sized logs down tracks in some range of mountains that might have come off of a backdrop for the TV show Bonanza. Few realize that logging railroads survived well past the Second World War, or in the case of Washington State, even until today.
One of the last and biggest log roads in Washington State was Weyerhaueser's Chehalis Western. Having taken over the Milwaukee Road's branches south of Tacoma in 1980, this line ran large log trains from Chehalis to the port of Tacoma -- behind the last GP38-2's built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division -- until 1992. With the publication of the lengthily titled Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser's Vail-McDonald Operation, there is finally a work that tells the story of this line, and its adjacent feeders, the Vail branch, and the Curtis Milburn & Eastern, starting in 1924 and running through to 1995.
This book is printed in a large hardback format identical to many college textbooks, and indeed it carries a feel of a textbook history inside as well. Reproduction of the numerous black-and-white photos is top notch, and many maps are also included. The work is organized into thirteen chapters and includes numerous technical appendices, which reflects its highly specialized subject matter.
The content overall is solid. One could wish for a more up-to-date final chapter from a book so freshly published, but as well researched and lavishly illustrated as the book is, this hardly is a critical flaw. Today, what remains of the line is primarily operated by Tacoma Rail, and plays host to tourist railroads Mount Rainier Scenic, and Chehalis-Centralia, and this book has become a must have for many of their employees. Fans of the Chehalis Western, the Milwaukee Road, or today's shortlines south of Puget Sound would also enjoy this book.
Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser's Vail-McDonald Operation is available occasionally from Amazon as well as directly from the publisher.
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