Literally.
This will be the first of a handful of posts about things I stumbled on during the last few weeks and a 7,703 mile road trip.
One of the stops was Tillamook, Oregon. Tillamook was formerly home to the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad, a former Southern Pacific line that suffered some severe washouts about 10 years ago, and was landlocked.
The railroad once served an industrial park that was formerly a Naval Air Station – now home to the Tillamook Air Museum, housed in a former blimp hanger. So, we made a quick trip over to see if anything was outside, as unfortunately we did not have time to go through the museum.
Naturally, pulling into the lot, I spot an EMD in the field. I took a stroll over and find another..
Sitting there were two EMD 16-567C engines. The railroads fleet was once made up of several GP and SD9 locomotives, the majority of which were scrapped a few years ago. I assume these were either leftovers from the scrapping, or just parts engines they once kept around. Lots of rusty old machine shop equipment sat along with them.
These things are pretty well junk having been sitting in the Oregon elements for a number of years..but hey, old engines are old engines!
In the adjacent lot next to the engines was some of Oregon Coast Scenic’s stored equipment, as well as POTB SD9 4406. Not sure who owns this one these days, as it does not appear on their roster.
The Tillamook Air Museum blimp hanging is downright massive – I hope to get back one day to check it out. Outside is a mini-guppy plane.
Just up the road is the Oregon Coast Scenic, a small tourist railroad operating on the former POTB tracks that are still intact, which the day we were there was running with McCloud River 25. If you are in the area, be sure to check them out. A neat little ride on literally, the Oregon Coast.
Port Of Tillamook 101 is owned by the scenic railroad, and was painted by her former owners in a cow inspired paint job, homage to the areas Dairy industry.
Former Great Northern F7 274 is one of the railroads diesel’s. Also up the road is the Tillamook Country Smokers Jerky factory outlet that I highly recommend, my wallet, does not.
Be sure to check out the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad – https://oregoncoastscenic.org/
Vintage Diesel Design 
7000-mile road trip? You’re as much a rambler as Will VanDorp. I’m glad if you’re safely home again.
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Interesting photos. I’d love to know more about the Holstein inspired paint job locomotive. Also, interesting comment/comparison by George.
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I was AOIC of NRTF Totsuka (Navy HF Transmitter site, Totsuka Japan) from 1995-1999. We had two, HUGE, Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines for emergency power for our 32 HF Transmitters. I was told they were installed during the Vietnam War in the mid 1960’s. The story was they were train engines and somehow got brought to Japan for that purpose. The techs that “maintained” them were Navy Seabee’s, MUSE techs, and not really good at maintenance. In fact, darn lazy and it was way over their heads. 1998 the MUSE tech told me he had somehow flooded the engine with oil and was going to start it up to push out the oil. Well….he broke that diesel engine forever, hydrolocked I think is the term. Broke the crank shaft. I called FB Morse in the states and they said they wish they knew about those two engines because they could have provided support. The rep. said they had a guy that covered the Pacific region for the military and we fell through the cracks. Anyway, we shut down NRTF Totsuka about 2000 and gave the land back to the Japanese gov. I can only imagine how they are going to have to tear down those two engines to get them out of there. I wished I was allowed to take pictures of those two engines but we were not allowed for whatever reason. Too bad. I liked your blog and information about Cleveland Diesel. I grew up in Akron and loved to read about the great manufacturing companies that used to be in Cleveland.
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