SheepCreek / Loon Lake

Woaw!

In the end of the video, there is a very lovely bridge over a street, that could become a very fine scene

in a Modelrailroad...

Apreciate very much

greatings from France

Gaston

Bridges

There are several bridges along the line that make worthy model candidates.

I think Ted is on a hill next to Woolard Road filming the Eastbound turn. Google street view:

The bridge at Chattaroy over Dragoon Creek is new. Google street view still has the old bridge

The Highway 231 bridge crosses both the highway and Sheep creek

Little Spokane River Drive Bridge

In the Dean video, after they stop the truck, is mostly of the current highway 2 bridge. That bridge is newer. If I understand correctly, the old highway 2 bridge was between the center column and the abutment on the right of the video. It appears both abutments were reused / modified for the new bridge. It was a ballasted deck bridge and had a great norther logo on it. The old Dean station was located just beyond the bridge.

I'm looking at including the Little Spokane River Bridge. I floated the river on a intertube as a kid several times and may have passed under this bridge (I'm not sure where we started). I only have one old picture of the bridge.

One more video

I bumped into this video and had to share:

If your thinking of watching just one train video, watch this one.

The author notes the locations in the description. I'm planning to model two of the locations shown: Loon Lake (starting at 1:33) and Little Spokane River Bridge (starting at 7:02).

A neat thing about drone videos is they show the perspective from a typical modeling angle.

GN's 3rd mainline?

Great Northern Rail Map of Washington State

James Hill envisioned a system with 3 mainlines connecting between Spokane and the pacific coast. I downloaded this map from the Washington State Archives while doing research. State archives date the map as 1921 but the date in the lower right corner says published in 1910. If you click on the map you should get a larger version to explore the names of the towns.

This map of Washington State shows the 3 mainlines between the pacific coast and Spokane (spoh-KAN). I have other maps and documents that show the 3 mainlines as well, but this is perhaps the most clear.

1. At the bottom of the map was the southern mainline. This was the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway; connecting from Portland along the Columbia River via Pasco to Spokane

2. The center line, bisecting the state connecting the Seattle area via Wenatchee to Spokane.

3. The northern main line connecting from Vancouver BC, through Princeton crossing the international boundary to Oroville. At Oroville a line connects to Wenatchee but the northern line continues to Curlew. From Curlew the line continues to Grand Forks BC, Marcus and on to Spokane. The northern mainline was almost completed. The dashed line between Princeton and Sumas Landing BC was never built. I played with the idea of modeling a "what if" that connection had been completed...

The line between Marcus and Dean is the portion I intend to model.

Different names given to this section of track since construction started in 1889:

•     The Spokane Falls and Northern RY,
•     the GN northern mainline,
•     the Kettle Falls Branch, and
•     the Chewelah Turn

Perhaps others too. It was nicknamed "the snake" by the crews that worked it, due to the frequent curves. For a number of years the crews were under a Spokane Falls and Northern contract and referred to as "snake men" by GN employees. A little more about the GN northern mainline can be found here.

The connection from Curlew to Oroville was too expensive to operate and did not have many customers. Connecting from Oroville to Wenatchee down the Okanogan River valley (now known as the CSCD) worked better. The tracks between Curlew to Oroville were pulled up by 1936.

One of the biggest changes happened in 1940. Marcus was inundated by the creation of Lake Roosevelt caused by the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. Many residents of Marcus were relocated to where the map is labeled as Meyers Falls and the town is now known as Kettle Falls.

I would also like to note, the GN mainline between Spokane and points east is shown. The old mainline heads north out of Spokane and Hillyard to Dean and Newport before heading into Idaho. At Sandpoint, Idaho, one can see the "N.P." (Northern Pacific) and "S.I." (Spokane International) connections labeled. The GN and SI continue north to Bonners Ferry. The NP heads east into Montana along the Clark Fork river (now Montana Rail Link).

In 1970, with the Burlington Northern merger, the NP line between Sandpoint and Spokane was selected as the BN main. The prior GN line continued to Newport with branch service for a number of years and has now been pulled up.

Thanks for reading.