It's just another winter night on the former Great Northern mainline as a meet is made at Scenic. The crew of westbound Z-CHCSSE1-12A is happy to have successfully completed another trip through the 7.8-mile Cascade Tunnel; as they approach the top of the 2.2% descent to Skykomish, the exhaust from their passage pours out of the bore and catches the headlights of an empty grain train stopped in the siding beyond the US 2 overpass. After a quick flush, it'll be the eastbound's turn to pass through the hole in the earth some 1,500 feet below the pass located in 1889 by, and later named for, the civil engineer John Stevens.
