Tag Archives: commuter

Sounder In the Fall At Picnic Point

One evening, while up near Everett, I had a bit of spare time on my hands.  I had noticed a park along the waterfront called Picnic Park and had noted that I would check it out at some point.  This was a good time to try finding out what it was like.  The weather was not great but, with time on my hands, I headed down there.  It is a small park along the water and there is a bridge across the railroad to reach it.  As I walked across the bridge, there was a nice view down to where the coast curves around and the trees along the shore had some nice fall colors.

With the sun popping in and out on a regular basis, I thought this would be a good place if a train was coming.  As it happened, the Sounder commuter rail train from Seattle to Everett was not far off so I decided to wait for it to come through.  A few minutes later it came in to view.  There was a family with a young child standing on the bridge waving to the crew and, when I looked at the photos at home, I could see both crew waving back.  It was a pretty short train.  The Sounder North has not been too successful and the commuter rail ridership is well down due to COVID.  I guess there is no need for more cars just now.

Whose Trains Are These?

Chicago was a stop off on a work trip.  We were on final approach to O’Hare and I was looking out of the window at the industrial areas that surround the airport.  There are rail tracks scattered throughout these areas so seeing trains is not a surprise.  However, I was a little caught out by what appeared to be some old Metra commuter cars parked up in one space.  They have clearly been out of use for a while.  If anyone knows who they belong to, please let me know.

Sounder Locos

Scanning back through some images looking for something else, I came across these shots of some Sounder commuter rail locomotives.  I shot these as part of a shoot that had a previous post.  I hadn’t focused on the locos so much but this train had a loco leading but two locos trailing as well.  The trailing locos were the old and the new with an F59PHI and an MPX together.  No idea why three locos were on a relatively short train but I guess there was a good reason!

Sounder Takes the Fans to the Seahawks

The Sounder commuter rail service takes passengers from both north and south of Seattle in to the city.  The service from the south end is a very popular one and is expanding.  The northern service from Everett has not been as popular and is not growing in the same way.  However, on both routes, special trains are run on days with big sporting events such as the Seahawks playing at home.  There is normally no service on the weekends so this is an unusual sight.

I was after some Sounder shots for possible use in a future project so headed down to Shoreline where the trains run alongside the beach.  The beach is accessed by a footbridge over the tracks.  It has some good sightlines for shots but also fencing that is not so helpful.  I tried out a location further down and close to the tracks and it was not a bad spot.  Since two trains were heading to the game about 15 minutes apart, I did go back to the bridge to see how that looked too.

As the train was past me, I could continue to watch it as it ran along the shore a good portion of the way to the city.  It did go around a headland but again popped into view as it got closer to the downtown area.