Western Wednesday


AemJaYstrains said:
this tunnel entrance looks cool :D
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These are scans of chemical film. Kinda grainy but have good information. Guessing 1990 for the date.
1st is East Portal before the 2nd ventilation fan:
bn8007.jpg


After the 2nd fan was installed:
bnsf4636.jpg


Door closed, ventilation on:
EastPortal.jpg


Later
 
AemJaYstrains said:
this tunnel entrance looks cool :D
Click to expand...
This the longest tunnel on American network. It's not even close to Swiss tunnels in length, but at almost 8 miles still very long. You can stand at the West Portal right on the track and see the headlight of a train for 20 minutes before it will get close. All you will hear is just a distant deep rumble. This tunnel was also electrified long time ago. Worlds largest in size, single unit electrics used to run through here; Great Northern W1 class. Too bad they went backwards and de electrified this line. Now it's sort of a bottle neck because it takes sometimes half hour to blow out the diesel smoke out if it. The infrastructure that you see on the picture is actually the fan system for blowing out the fumes.
 
KriegslokBR52 said:
This the longest tunnel on American network. It's not even close to Swiss tunnels in length, but at almost 8 miles still very long. You can stand at the West Portal right on the track and see the headlight of a train for 20 minutes before it will get close. All you will hear is just a distant deep rumble. This tunnel was also electrified long time ago. Worlds largest in size, single unit electrics used to run through here; Great Northern W1 class. Too bad they went backwards and de electrified this line. Now it's sort of a bottle neck because it takes sometimes half hour to blow out the diesel smoke out if it. The infrastructure that you see on the picture is actually the fan system for blowing out the fumes.
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Ya, used to be the longest tunnel in the Western Hemisphere. Mt McDonald (sp?) tunnel at Rogers Pass came in something like 300 ft longer.
The thing about the Cascade Tunnel is if you stand just at the right spot at the West Portal, you can see the other end. Well, if the door is open. It is uphill all the way to about 200ft before the East Portal then the alignment heads down toward Berne ( and points east). When a train comes in Westbound from Berne, it is like the sun rising.
I happened to be at the West Portal for the 1st train West after the 2nd fan was installed. You could see it come in, then after about 10 minutes, the headlight disappeared. Apparently that 2nd fan blew all the smoke past the whole train. Scanner had the train crew really bitching. They did have O2 masks onboard. So when the ventilation was turned on was changed and ran at half power while a West bound was in the bore. So there still is about a 20 minute wait Eastbound for the tunnel to clear. Westbound can pretty much run one train after another, block signals depending.

I y'all are going through Cascade Pass, both East and West portals are worth planning for. Google map it to find those access roads.

Later
 
oh wow thnx for the historie teaching. never thaught about the diesel smoke 🤣 in switzerland we are not used to it 🤣 thank you for the insight
 
AemJaYstrains said:
oh wow thnx for the historie teaching. never thaught about the diesel smoke 🤣 in switzerland we are not used to it 🤣 thank you for the insight
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I only wish Americans kept their electrifications. After World War II they went backward and eliminated hundreds of miles of them, instead of modernizing them.
 
Iron Horseman said:
Copper prices were through the roof, and the short sighted folks saw a quick profit.
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Supposedly, but reading about Milwaukee Road, the management didn't exactly make a big profit at the end, at least not what they thought they would. But you're 💯% right about the short sightedness.
 
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