Delivering Holland America's New Domes, Part 2

Finishing up the tour, and some failed ambitions of chasing are remedied in Seattle.

In the downstairs lounge of the 1057, there are several seats affording a great view to lounge customers. Holland America B cars 1055 and 1057 were missing the small table and chairs that occupied the area opposite this group of seats on the first B cars, 1051 and 1053, but they could be installed later. The door on the right leads to the outside observation platform.

The downstairs lounge of the 1057. The glass doors on the right lead to the wheelchair elevator, which enables ADA passengers to sit in the dome. In transit, the elevator was positioned midway between floors, allowing safety devices to lock both doors.

HALX 1057 is a B car, fitted with an ADA wheelchair elevator, which can be seen right behind the stairs. The rows of seats immediately behind the elevator are on tracks, and can be scooted back to allow for disabled persons to tie down in the dome area.

After concluding my tour, I returned to Central Washington to tend to some family business, hoping to catch the train in the Columbia River Gorge on my way home. With the sunny skies holding, I arrived in the gorge at Maryhill, and set up for a shot at Avery, WA and waited. And waited....

While I sat and waited, the train was held up by another train in front of it performing some switching at Roosevelt. When it finally arrived at my position at Avery, WA, I was beginning to wonder if I had missed it. Although the train was fairly long, I was surprised by the six units on the head end, including two leased FURX SD40-2's, and EMD's well-traveled SD60 demonstrator EMD 3 at the rear of the consist.

At long last, our four cars bring up the rear of the train. From front to back, they are: HALX 1057, HALX 1054, HALX 1055 and HALX 1056. I kind of blew it and wasn't in a good position when the train finally showed up, as my intent had been to focus on an away shot, which wasn't possible at this location. After this shot, the train was put into the hole at Dallesport, where it sat until well after dark. So much for my big chase.

Feeling like I needed to take just a few more photos, I detoured through Seattle during some travel on March 22 to snap a few more exterior shots of the cars before they made their way to Alaska. The sun broke through a rainy sky just as I arrived at King Street Station. Unfortunately, the shadow from a nearby building covered most of the cars. Still, I couldn't resist this wide angle shot of the 1057, taken from the pedestrian overpass.

A few hours later, with the sun safely down and no longer casting shadows, I returned to the station to get a few more shots of the cars. A BN switcher was due shortly to switch out the center cars, 1054 and 1055, for transfer to Stacey St. yard to begin the next leg of their journey to Alaska. The locomotive on the adjoining track is an F59PHi used on the Sounder commuter trains.

Framed against the 1055 and 1056, the new Seattle Seahawks Stadium lights up the night sky in the background.

King Street's classic clock tower is framed against a part of the Seattle skyline in my final photo. The sky appears blue because of the length of the exposure - almost a minute. It was getting late, and I still had some driving to do, so I bade the Holland America cars a fond farewell, with the hopes of catching them again, next time as rider in Alaska. I hope you have enjoyed these images of Holland America's newest cars.

In November, 2003, I had the chance to tour HALX 1055 while it was under construction. When I first caught the cars in Pasco, I shot a similar set of photos of the completed cars, and created another photo walkthrough for the sake of comparison.

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