Snoqualmie's RR Yard--A Closer Look

Antique steam engines and rusted railroad cars are the centerpiece of Snoqualmie, Washington's proud remnants of the logging town's past.

The yard includes steam and diesel locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, maintenance equipment used for building and repairing track, a 5-mile segment of historic railroad and a 19th-century train station.

I began our visit to the railroad yard of the town most frequently associated with the television show Twin Peaks by photographing this 1923 Two-Truck Heisler 4 engine from the Ohio Match Company. It was designed to pull trains up steep grades and negotiate sharp curves common to logging and mining industries.

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: Gentlemen. When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object in inquiry we must always pay strict attention.

I then photographed this passenger car. The history of the car was not available, but then again the question of which history arose--its role in passenger service vs. its role in the dark events of Twin Peaks.

I began to see the railroad yard as David Lynch might have seen it--not as merely old engines and railroad cars viewed on a sunny day, but as the warts of these antiques.

Viewing them on a cloudy day at dusk would have heightened the impact of these images.













Coming upon this nameplate for the Superheater built by The Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia in 1928 broke the Lynch spell and brought me back to the reality of the railroad yard.