Attempted thaw at Chemult - a photo on Flickriver

            I recently salvaged this slide. It was taken on Seattle Film Works' Kodak 5247 35mm film back in January 1980. Time was not kind to the image - it was pink as Pepto Bismol when I found it in an old slide tray.  This is one of the oldest railroad photos I have. Photoshop has made it somewhat tolerable.  

As many of you know, once upon a time trains were pulled by steam engines. For all their magnificence, steamers were very inefficient machines. Most of the steam they produced simply went up the stack and out into the countryside, instead of creating energy to move the train. Since a steam locomotive put out far more steam than it could use, it made sense to heat railroad passenger cars with steam from the locomotive. The steam was circulated through the train by pipes mounted under the cars.

When diesel locomotives began replacing steam engines, it created a problem - how do you keep all those thousands of passenger cars with steam heat warm? The answer was to equip diesel locomotives used on passenger trains with a steam boiler to heat the train.

When Amtrak took over rail passenger service in 1971, it inherited the railroads' fleet of steam heated cars, most of which had been built in the decade after WWII ended. When Amtrak acquired new cars, they had modern heating and cooling systems run by electricity. As the old cars were retired, the use of steam for heating was retired as well.

In January 1980, new cars for the Coast Starlight train were about a year away. On this very cold morning, the steam line between the dining car and the sleeping cars has frozen shut. No steam is getting to the sleepers. The passengers in these cars, who paid handsomely for the privilege of sleeping in a bed moving at up to 79 MPH, are freezing. 

The train has stopped at Chemult so the crew can attempt to thaw out the steam line and get some heat for the first class passengers. The steam in the cold air made quite a sight. This was a few years before Chemult was added as a station stop for the Bend ski business. At the time, the run from Klamath Falls to Eugene - 195 miles and over four hours - was the longest stretch in the entire Amtrak system without a passenger stop.

Speaking of Bend, the track behind the small depot in the distance is Burlington Northern's former Great Northern line. The ex-GN line connects at Bend with the Oregon Trunk. A year in the future, entirely by circumstance, I would ride over those rails aboard a brand new Amtrak Superliner train - but that's a story for a different photo.

Eventually, the problems with the steam lines were solved. There was warmth and comfort for first class, and the train continued on its run to Seattle.

Taken in: United States / Oregon / Chemult (show map)

Taken on: January 6, 1980

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