Coming into Seattle is an experience. Especially by train. You come down the shore of Puget sound with all the sights of a sea coast, old pilings, pieces of ships, fishing shacks and boat yards, the Boeing Air craft plant with its own airfield and in the distance, the Tacoma narrows bridge! Two of them now, as one was not enough for the present day traffic or as the speaker from “Rails to Trails” put it, ” Three, because “Galloping Gertie” the first bridge is under the water at the same place where it fell in November of 1940. And then into Seattle, where there are lots of new and seemingly expensive housing being built and sold. As you get closer to the old King street Station you notice a big building that looks like a monster ship from outer space, “Century Link Field.” Not sure what was on for the night but between the fence and the field a bunch of young men seemed to be concentrating on a lively game of football and it was in a pretty good mist of rain that had been threatening since we came out of the mountains. It seems out of place with the old Railroad station from another century and another power base, that of the the Great Northern Road. This was the power house railroad of the Northwest for the later half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The old station is in remarkable repair having gone through an extensive restoration. Hundreds of trains came and went at this station in the old days where only a few leave and come today.
I think I was surprised at the hills of Seattle even though I have been here before I did not remember how steep they were. Of course this is the original “skid row” where lumbermen skidded logs down to the mills. Which, I am sure is why almost every freight train we passed or passed us was loaded with many cars of cut lumber ready for building. Seattle is the home of the Weyerhaeuser Company that started back home and whose head quarters resembles Deere and Company’s grand building the only difference is it is made of wood rather than Cor-ten Steel. Out in the northwest lumber still has influence. And Weyerhaeuser still is cultivating and harvesting trees for lumber.
Tomorrow, wherein our intrepid traveler leaves his adventures in the Northwest and begins anew on another train, thrills, excitement and the romance of the rails!
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