The illustration of Grandpa Ron and Austin watching big trains in my book Grandpa, Do It! I Do It, Too! is from a photo I took at the Vancouver Washington Railway Station while we watched trains ( called rail fanning ) after Austin woke up from his nap on his 3rd Birthday Party Day. The Vancouver station is special because it is on a “wye” so it has two front doors – one on the northwest side for North-South traffic and one on the southeast for traffic turning East. There are two major Amtrak trains that stop daily each way here: The Empire Builder and The Coast Starlight, and then there are also eight Amtrak Cascades. Here is an interesting article from 2002 about the renovation plans for the station. It is fun to see how it compares to what is happening now (2 more Cascades are going through it!)
There is also a lot of BNSF, Union Pacific and Portland & Western Railroad freight traffic coming and going – and local sorting in the yard, so Grandpa Ron and Austin had lots of trains to watch!
MyGrandmaSue 
