by Scott Lothes/photos by the author
The annual Winterail slide show has been a catalyst for railfan road trips all over the West ever since a group of 120 photographers gathered at Sacramento’s Sierra Inn for the inaugural show on December 2, 1978. Winterail prompted two of my first three visits to the former Western Pacific main line through the Feather River Canyon, in 2009 and 2012. Since the show moved to my former home of Oregon in 2016, I’ve used it to revisit several of my favorite railroads in the Pacific Northwest, from the busy main lines of the Columbia Gorge to the sleepy Coos Bay branch out in the misty Coast Range.
The coronavirus pandemic curtailed Winterail in 2020 and 2021; when it resumed in 2022, I was keen to get back on the road. I’d planned an extended trip that included visits with many of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s West Coast members. (Note: The author is president of CRP&A.) In keeping with the Winterail spirit, I’d also set aside a few days for photography along the way. Since my introduction more than a decade earlier, California’s Feather River Canyon has become one of my favorite stretches of railroad in the country. I was eager to return, but unsure whether my timing was right.
ABOVE: In the late afternoon sun of March 15, 2023, a military train rolls west at Reno Junction, Calif., where a branch to Reno once connected to the Western Pacific main line. In the distance stands snowcapped State Line Peak, highest point in the Fort Sage Mountains at 7,993 feet.
On the morning of July 13, 2021, a Douglas fir tree had fallen onto a Pacific Gas & Electric power line in the canyon near Belden. A fuse that should have blown didn’t. Road construction delayed the arrival of the first lineworker by three hours. The region’s worst drought in a millennia and the state’s hottest summer on record had turned much of the landscape into ready kindling. A rogue drone curtailed aerial fire suppression efforts that evening. Rising winds fanned the flames.
What came to be called the Dixie Fire was one of the largest in state history and wouldn’t be fully contained for three and a half months. By then, it had claimed the life of one firefighter, destroyed more than 1,300 structures including most of the town of Greenville, Calif., and burned nearly a million acres. The fire forced temporary closures of both Union Pacific’s Canyon Subdivision and BNSF’s Gateway Subdivision, which meet at the famous Keddie Wye, and both companies deployed firefighting trains to the region.
ABOVE: Colorful containers on UP Train INPOA (North Platte, Neb.–Oakland, Calif.) cross over themselves on Williams Loop near Spring Garden on March 12, 2024.
While coordinating Winterail plans with Railfan & Railroad Associate Editor Justin Franz, I sought his advice about whether the recently burned landscape would still be worth a look. He’d reported on the Dixie Fire’s impacts on rail for R&R, and his prior years of Montana newspaper work included coverage of several fires there. As he explained, “The fire zone was huge and incorporated a lot of trackage. That said, fire zones often include a lot of unburned territory, too. As one wildland firefighter told me once, it doesn’t all burn; the fire really crawls through the landscape and creates a unique mosaic.” Justin concluded with more words of encouragement: “The spring after a big wildfire can be really interesting and unique, with new life and vegetation pushing through the burn. That could really provide some cool photo opportunities!”
By the time I’d made up my mind to go, the motel I’d used 10 years earlier in Quincy was fully booked for the two nights I had available. My search for alternatives turned up recently restored cabins in Paxton, just four miles down the canyon from Keddie, where I could sleep within earshot of the tracks.
Train traffic can be challenging. The former Western Pacific serves as one of two UP routes in and out of California’s Bay Area; the other is the former Southern Pacific over Donner Pass. The SP is 70 miles shorter and mostly double-tracked, while distributed power technology has helped tame its steeper grades. In addition to its greater length, the WP route suffers from sidings averaging only 6,000 feet long — too short for most of today’s trains.
ABOVE: A 10,000-foot-long North Platte–Fresno, Calif., mixed freight steps across Clio Trestle on March 12, 2024. Two more locomotives are cut-in mid-train.
In 2010, UP finished improving clearances over Donner to accommodate trains carrying double-stacked shipping containers, which previously had to run via the canyon. Since then, the former WP’s primary role has been handling long and heavy westward trains. Most days see at least an intermodal and one or two mixed freights; further UP traffic depends mainly on unit train business, which can add anywhere from zero to several more trains in a day. West of Keddie, BNSF typically contributes two mixed freights each way daily, plus occasional unit trains of its own.
I beat the odds on the first day of my 2022 trip. Driving up from Sacramento, Calif., on March 16, I arrived in the canyon in the late morning and intercepted a grain train near Twain. After following it back west for 40 miles, it met a BNSF freight at Poe, just below Pulga and its landmark bridges. That train met a UP military special at Virgilia, which later met a second BNSF freight working its way up the canyon. I followed that BNSF train onto the Gateway Sub — passing up a UP freight it met at Virgilia — until the sun dropped below the canyon walls above Keddie. The next day was slower (perhaps more typically so), with one train in the early morning and two in the late afternoon. Two more came down the canyon at dawn on my last day before I had to hit the road. (Several more ran at night.)
The landscape they traversed was sobering and fascinating. Many parts of the canyon appeared unscathed, almost exactly as I remembered them from a decade earlier. Then, rounding a blind curve on Highway 70 would reveal an otherworldly vista of burnt earth, dead brown trees, and char-blackened trunks. Often, while I was still trying to reckon with one of those scenes, the road would take another twist and the view would return to normal — if such a word still applied — with no visual evidence of the recent flames…