Category: Photo Section
Photos from the Pennyrail Newsletter
I chased this train up and down the Columbia Gorge, the dates were June 6 and 7, 1997. But my trusty Yashica had finally given up the ghost. My developed Ektachrome slides were all out of focus.
If it hadn’t been for photo stops and preventive stops to check for hot bearings, I would have only seen this train once in each direction. These two days the former ESPEE 4449 was running excursions between Portland, Oregon and Wishram, Washington. The Burlington Northern graciously hosted these runs, and the BNSF continues the practice. The train is traveling on the former Spokane, Portland & Seattle (SP&S) Railway on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Great scenery, good safe access for railfans, Beacon Rock, the Bonneville Dam tunnel, other rock lined tunnels and miles of track parallel to Hwy 14 only a few yards off the fog line. It doesn’t get much better than that, unless all your own slides had developed nicely too. Duh.!
The tunnel here is the result of moving the line further away from the river and dam when the “dam” people built the second powerhouse and bigger & better fish ladder at Bonneville. Lessons learned: a. Not a great idea to chase trains in a motor home, and b. Always have a backup camera. Credit to Gary Ostlund, submitted by James Futrell.
A train made entirely of chocolate has set a new Guinness World Record as the longest chocolate structure in the world.
The sculpture, on display at the busy Brussels South station, is 112-feet (34.05 meters) long and weighs over 2,755 pounds (1250 kilos).
Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia spent over 700 hours constructing the masterpiece. He said he came up with the idea of the train last year 
after visiting the Belgian Chocolate Festival in Bruge: “I had this idea for a while, and I said what do you think if we do this realization of a long chocolate train, you know, because a train you can make it as long as you like.
