The Oriental Limited is slowly easing by No. 5012, having just exited the original Great Northern Cascade Tunnel in Washington State. Cameras were poised to record the last westbound train over the old snowshed route. But, instead of a happy group of tourists on the back platform of the observation car there was a solitary passenger bundled up against the chill.

This unhappy circumstance was remedied by replacing the lone passenger (by photo retouching) with Wenatchee’s Apple Festival Queen and her Ladies in Waiting before release to the press. The next westbound Oriental Limited will pass through the newly completed 7.79 miles tunnel, several hundred feet below. That tunnel opened on January 12, 1929.

The Oriental Limited was the Great Northern’s premium passenger train prior to introducing the streamlined Empire Builder in 1947. And you thought photo-shopping and spin-control was something new…!

Submitted by Gary Ostlund. – Pix’s by Lee Pickett, Index, WA ., as seen in Charles & Dorothy Woods book: Great Northern Railway a Pictorial Study