My records reveal that I’ve used this picture previously.   Clearly it is one of my favorites.    This is Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, crossing the Chambers Creek lift-bridge near Steilacoom, Washington.  South Puget Sound was my stomping grounds until  ’04,  and a recreational and railroad paradise.

  The train is northbound and follows the Sound for about 15 miles, facing great sunsets with the Olympic Mountains to the west.  After tunneling under Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park, it will skirt Commencement Bay for another 5 or 6 miles.

  This was a warm Summer evening out on the boat, and I had anchored, patiently awaiting a train, any train.   Afterward I overnighted a few miles south near the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge.  Nature provides a nicely protected breakwater, with the double track railroad a hundred feet or so up the bank, and endless wildlife throughout.  A campfire on the beach with hot chocolate and marshmallows is in order.

   As luck would have it, rail traffic that evening was light, actually non-existant.  As I read my book and watched the daylight wane I felt certain that I was skunked. But low and behold, I heard whistling for the crossing at the ferry dock about a mile south.   Another look at the bridge, with the sun now down to about a half-finger on an outstretched arm, and fading fast.  Camera ready, here it comes clattering across the bridge.   Click.  It was then that I realized the sun was tightly packed between the train and the rail.    Is that dumb luck or what.?     Could I have planned it that way……?    Not likely.

            – Gary Ostlund