Royal Hudson #2860 - Out and about again

[Ferryman]

This caught me right off guard this afternoon. I was sitting out on my deck, and I heard a Steam Whistle, followed by a Budd Car Horn, way off in the distance. I stopped to think of what that could be for a second....Of course! The Royal Hudson! I immediately jumped in my car with video camera in hand, and off I went to the Railway Heritage Park. As I got close to the Railway tracks, I could see puffs of black smoke coming out of the trees, in the direction of the park. Once I arrived at the former BC Rail yards, sure enough, there was the Royal Hudson coming down the tracks. What a sight and sound this was to experience!

I tried to figure out what the occasion was this afternoon by asking people who were already waiting for the train to come, along side the tracks. I was told that seeming the Budd Cars were giving rides to the Public around town, that they may as well bring the Hudson out of the shop. This was its first time back out on the rails since her Spring trip to White Rock. The Hudson just parked in the same spot it did back in the spring, when crews were trying to work out the last bit of bugs before it headed for White Rock. A few minutes after 4:00pm, the Rocky/Whistler Mountaineer train came through, and the Hudson was blasting both sets of whistles, as the passenger train slowly rolled through the yard. The sounds were echoing throughout the valley, and I had ringing ears by the time the sounds stopped. That must of been a real treat for the travellers on the train.

Anyways, here's a video for all you train fans out there! The whistle show is in the last clip of the video.

Enjoy!!

[Touy]

Thanks for sharing that Chris im always happy to see #2860 working agian.

[Coastal Drought]

Thanks for sharing that video you took Chris.

[Retrovision]

That was really enjoyable, especially for fans, thanks for the effort, Chris. It's great also to see the old BCRail RDCs working again, no thanks to our SoCred Provincial government's shutting down of affordable passenger rail service along the line.

[Ferryman]

Tommorrow ( September 29th ) is Steam Day at the West Coast Heritage Railway park here in Squamish. The Royal Hudson will be fired up once again, first thing tomorrow morning. She will then drive out to the Former BC Rail Yard, to do a Whistle Salute (as you see in the video posted above) to the Whistler Mountaineer Train, as it goes past Northbound at 10:00am, and Southbound at 4:15pm. In between those times, it will be out in the open at the Railway Park, and people will be allowed to climb up to the Cab of the train with the engineer for $5, to blow the Whistles and ring the bell. The proceeds go to further restoration of the train. At Noon, there will be a special ceremony marking the one year Anniversary of completion of the rebuild of the boiler project.

Graham (Retro) has told me he plans on catching the 8:30am bus out of the Greyhound Bus depot, and arriving here at 9:40am, where I'll pick him up and head over to the Rail yard to watch the Train Salute.

Hope to see more of you there!

[Mill Bay]

ferryman said:

Tommorrow ( September 29th ) is Steam Day at the West Coast Heritage Railway park here in Squamish.

Hope to see more of you there!

Man, Chris, you have me smacking myself for my own stupidity now...

The WCRA website is one I should always be keeping an eye on, because if I had I would have known about this and could've planned on being there.

Since I've mentioned a few times the toss-up I have between ferries and railways, it seems like I don't do justice enough to either passion.

You're pretty lucky to be so close to the railway heritage park, so make the most of it for us and make sure you come back with lots of images for us to experience.

Cursing my own ignorance... Mill Bay

[Ferryman]

What a blast I had today! I hoped and waited for Graham to show up at the bus depot this morning, but I never saw him. Hearing the Royal Hudsons whistle from the Depot really made me anxious to get to the Rail yard as fast as possible.

Anyways, mostly photos for now. Keep an eye out for more videos tomorrow .

I arrived there just in the nick of time to watch the Steam Whistle Salute to the Whistler Mountaineer. The Hudson was just leanin on both whistles.





Not long after this, she went back to the Railway park, and pulled into the Train Station they have set up in there. Although there was a little bit of an embarrassing mishap as they pulled into the station...The front bumper of the train knocked over the staircase that was to lead to the cab of the train from the station platform. This caused the train to come to an Emergency stop. You can see a fellow standing on the staircase, which was all knocked over just seconds after the picture was taken. I would have gotten video footage of it, but I was immediately distracted while filming the arrival of the train, when a former classmate of mine from High School suddenly appeared beside me.





From this point on, I paid 10 dollars to jump up in the Cab, blast the whistles, and then take a ride across the park, as a passenger in the two coaches it was pulling. Luckily Photographers were allowed to take photos from the area between the two coaches.





A New train to the Railway park.



This is me, blasting the whistles.