Photo of the Month - December, 2003

It's 1962, and the engineer of this Southern Pacific helper set has his train in hand as his train crosses Wolf Creek trestle amidst the howl of a four unit mid-train set of SD9's in dynamics braking mode. Helper operations were the norm for most of the SP's tenure on the Tillamook branch, until traffic began to trail off in the latter decades of the last century. Today, this power lashup could easily be leading a POTB train, albeit with centerbeam cars in tow instead of boxcars. Photo by Elmer Radamacher, who was a brakeman for the SP on this line.