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As the Renton Boeing plant is accessed from the Seattle Sub at Tukwila now by BNSF this report would seem to fit in this Blog.  On Wednesday 5-20-09 I had the day off work and around 1:00 PM could hear horns blowing from the south while at home.  So I headed down near Boeing’s and saw the headlight of the northbound Renton Local approaching.  They left their train in the siding and continued light power up to the switch where they backed into the Boeing plant on the former NP as they had no cars to deliver today but some to pick up.

In the Renton area this short stub track to the Boeing plant is the sole remaining section of the former Northern Pacific line in service south of Bellevue that once ran to Woodinville and Sumas out of Renton.  The NP north of here to Bellevue is out of service and the old NP south of the Boeing facility to Black River was removed years ago.  Trains have used the former Pacific Coast line from Black River to the switch here rejoining the former NP, since the old NP tracks through Renton were removed after the BN merger.  Trailing the 2258 is GP39-2 2786 which is a former Santa Fe unit. 

This is the first time I have seen two repainted units in the new image.  I got some lunch at Kidd Valley and waited for the power to return.  It soon came out with a couple of empty Boeing cars and went back to its train, switched all the cars onto the main track and then the power ran down the siding to the south end, backing onto the train to depart.  I drove to the new Cedar River bridge crossing as I had not photographed a train here since the old Pacific Coast bridge had been replaced with a new structure that the larger Boeing 737′s can pass through.  Large clouds were building and getting closer to the sun and the sun did go away as the train approached.  I figured it would be a pretty dark shot but to my surprise the cloud backed off long enough for the train to pass!  I telephoto’d the first shot pretty tight, just in case the sun did get nailed by the cloud I would at least have one nice sunlit shot.

But the sun remained out as the train moved out onto the new Cedar River bridge.  The train had the 2 Boeing cars, a tank car and four doublestack cars of garbage picked up in Tukwila earlier.  Notice the traffic on southbound I-405.  Glad I wasn’t in that mess today!   

And the “turn around” shot as the BNSF 2258 enters the Renton street running towards the depot. 

This brings back memories of seeing Milwaukee Road trains coming down this same street in the 1970′s and a 1969 photo in the local paper of the NP’s North Coast Limited detouring through Renton and out the Milwaukee when Stampede Pass was shut down after a washout.  I was hoping I might see the Renton Local today and I was not disappointed.