Railroad Photo Gallery

Bellingham Washington in the Mid-20^th Century

By James E. Lancaster, PhD.

Copyright 2009. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are by the author.
Photos may not be used for any purpose without permission.

Most of the black and white photos in this gallery were taken with a Kodak Brownie camera that used 620 film. The quality varies greatly. The photos have been run through photoshop with varying results. The photos were taken between 1950 and 1952.

A northbound International behind E7 511 is stopped at the Bellingham depot. The Internationals were delivered as five ccar trains - mail-baggage, two coaches, coach-cafe and parlor-observation. However, right from the day of their inaugural runs extra cars were needed at times to handle the number of passengers. These extra cars were drawn from a pool that included 1947 Empire Builder Day-Nite coaches, GN's unique pendulum coach and modernized heavyweight coaches. The second car on this International is one of the latter.

The Clyde Beatty Circus train visited Bellingham every year in the early 1950s..

EMD switcher 116 moves a boxcar in the Bellingham yard that was northwest of the depot along the waterfront.

EMD switcher 131 pushes a lone boxcar in front of the Bellingham depot.
Note the switchman hanging on the far end of the boxcar.

GP7 601 is on the headend of the local mail and express train. The train brought a storage mail and express car from Seattle that will be spotted on the track leading to the freight house. Here the engineer is looking back as a trainman uncouples the storage car from the rest of the train.

The  storage mail and express car has ben spotted on the freight house track north of the depot. A contract mail truck and a Railway Express Agency truck will back up to each door of the car to unload their respective cargoes. The process will be repeated in reverse in the late afternoon and the car will be added ahead of the coach on the southbound local by one of the Bellingham switch engines.

There are many more photos of trains in Ferndale on the follwing web pages:

Ferndale Home Page

Passenger Train Photo Gallery

Freight Train Photo Gallery

Jim Lancaster

Tustin, CA

Created: April 16, 2009