BN 1975 Station Revenues C-H

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

BN 1971 Consolidated Annual Station Earnings

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

GN And BN Trainorders

 

BN Trainorders

 

1892 The NP/GN Overcrossing At Espanola Agreement

Note the map stating the GN line was actually the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway at the time.

 

BN AFE Index Card-Espanola

Courtesy of the PNRA and Aaron Schwarz.

“Lights, Camera, Amtrak!”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

 April 9, 2017

Intel confirmed. Signals lit. Train imminent. Anticipation. I scope out the area. It’s cold enough that I’ve got to don another jacket from my grip. I plant my pod and frame. A couple of test shots; some calculations; corresponding adjustments: I’m ready. Won’t be long now. No sound, just the banter between us aficionados and the distant, distinct, all-to-familiar note. Not much around. Neith moonlit, near-clear skies of constellations twinkling are a few, mostly dark houses; abandoned Bates-like motel; shuttered “Dealers in Mercantile;” closed brick schoolhouse; foundation of a long raised speeder shed; crossing gates for Manila Road that leads to nowhere but rusty elevators and dusty fields, but Espanola, home to a handful of diehard residents, has never lost its strategic railroad importance. Thousands of miles away in the Lone Star State, BNSF dispatchers rely on it to orchestra meets for its plenty long siding for longer and longer and of late, more frequent freights. But this is no freight we’re here to record. It’s the eastbound Seattle section of the Builder now blowing for the road to nowhere and “through” this nondescript “place,” streaking silver, red, blue and gold across our frame as it slips its sleepy and slumbering passengers past our prone and poised cameras in less than seconds leaving this indelible photographic mark four minutes into the morning. Quickly we compare our results: “Nice! Cool! Sweet!” Disassemble and vacate. The townsfolk? None the wiser to our momentary presence and fortuitous intent: to catch the Empire Builder track-speeding at Espanola. 

"General Purpose Sunset"

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

October 31, 2017

On the way home from work today, I couldn’t resist breaking out my ne’er-without gear to work this ephemeral, “General Purpose” sunset. Tied down at Espanola with a string of CH’s gathered up from “High-Line” elevators the likes of Harrington and Odessa and a few other, all but ghost towns with station names in between, the “Scud” local with an A-B-A trio of Geeps will need another crew to bring it into Yardley less than 25 mile poles east. Here, in Espanola, a hamlet of say 30-if-that inhabitants, where Manila is the main and only “drag” that crosses BNSF’s Columbia River Sub and disappears into an endless field of dust; where the long since closed mercantile and post office; a dilapidated motel and forgotten storehouse; the brick, now renovated schoolhouse; a harvest-filled cluster of elevators and just the other side of the right-of-way a concrete slab is all that remains of the tiny section house complete with rails to tuck away a speeder, one gets the sense that the place might have been a microcosm of trade, travel, and teaching decades past. But like so many start-up townsites that sprung up as railways like the Great Northern built west in the late 1800’s, it has succumbed and shriveled in the face of progress just as quickly as it sprung out of the ground.

GN Overpass Of The CW Near Espanola

Courtesy of the NP Telltale.

1943 NP Motorcar Along Espanola Road

1984 Harrington Freight Agency Closure

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz.

1943 Medical Lake Topo Map

Courtesy of the 92d Air Refueling Wing Historian.

1954 Espanola Topo Map

The tracks that the GN crosses are the CW branch between Medical Lake and Deep Creek.