Customer Reviews

The Southern Pacific in Oregon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because I was raised in a Pullman passenger car sitting on the ground next to the Southern Pacific line in Southern Oregon. The book is a wonderful compilation of photos from all eras over all of the lines in Oregon. I was most interested in the Siskiyou line but the authors do an equally competent job covering the Cascade or Main line west to San Francisco (SF), the Coast line and all the branches around Portland. For you non-SP fans, trains going away from SF are headed East regardless of the direction and those headed toward SF are headed West. One of the best things I like about this book is the maps. There are strip maps of the entire SP system in Oregon showing terrain and all of the siding and communities of today and years long gone past and the mileposts. Mileage markers are also figured from San Francisco...SP headquarters on Market Street to be exact. The words that accompany the many photos provide a history of each segment of the line, some of the communities along the way as well as interesting stories the authors have acquired. One of the authors, Tom Dill, was a fireman-engineer for 18 years on the SP and Ed Austin's uncle worked for the company too. Over the years they took many great photos and you'll see them all in this book.

So you always wanted to be an engineer on one of those big locomotives climbing up out of Eugene into the Cascades and headed toward Klamath Falls. Here's a quote from the book:

Even with three AC's handling a train, speeds between Oakridge and Cascade Summit seldom exceeded twenty miles per hour and often dropped to ten miles per hour. Thus, heat and smoke in the longer tunnels on the Cascade line presented a significant problem for train crews...On one trip fireman Herb Abarr, using a thermometer in the cab of the second helper locomotive, measured a temperature of 176 degrees in tunnel No. 7.

There is a second book that accompanies this one and it is called, "The Southern Pacific in Oregon - Pictorial". It is made up of many of the extra photos that wouldn't fit in the first book. If you can find it you'll also be pleased with the coverage of the line but be warned that both books are hard to find. If you can get them, however, you'll be very pleased with your purchase. I know one thing. You're not getting my copies.