A few years ago, my wife and I were walking the beautiful riverside trail along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. One of the access points for the trail is next to a business park, the Columbia Business Center, that stands on what was a Kaiser shipyard during World War II. Some of the shipyard buildings still exist along with many modern commercial and industrial buildings. This area is rail served by a short spur off of the BNSF main line that also runs along the river and through downtown Vancouver.
The BNSF trackage was once the SP&S main line along the North shore of the Columbia River, and I've spent many enjoyable hours railfanning at various points along those tracks. The spur in the business park serves several businesses with occasional box cars of various commodities, covered hopper cars for a plastics manufacturer and flat car loads of steel for fabricators and some ship building.
During our visit, we happened on three neat switchers sitting idle on a siding next to one of the buildings.
This neat little critter, CBCX-103, is a GE 25 ton industrial switcher that was built in 1942 for Kaiser Shipyard. You can see how diminutive it is, nestled up against this next locomotive.
With the little 25 tonner just peeking into the photo on the right, GE 86 ton centercab CBCX-102 looks much more imposing. This loco was originally built for the Pacific Lumber Company in Eureka, California and delivered in 1956. Despite not having the spiffy orange and black paint job and logo of the other two, this is the youngest of the three. The centercab has distinctive rectangular chrome framed headlights, shown below in an oblique view that also highlights the orange safety striping.
It's great to see these workhorses still earning their keep with second, and even third, owners, although clearly not seeing daily use. Finding small railroading scenes like this is a kick and inspiration for my modeling interests as well.
