Cellpic Sunday – 26 January 2020

Yuma, Arizona.

A two and a half hour drive from Buckeye brought us to Yuma for a Civil Air Patrol training activity. Of course, having not been in the area other than passing through to San Diego, we stayed the night and took in the sights of two state parks. On the way between two parks, we happened upon a steam engine, Southern Pacific Locomotive 2521 located at Pivot Point Park. Of course, I had to stop for a few minutes to capture a cell pic or two. A quick Internet search told me much about the engine that was built in 1907 at Philadelphia, PA. This engine burned fuel oil instead of coal, a common fuel for the engines of the western United States. It finished service in Yuma in 1957. On display at the Colorado River State Historic Park for many years, it was moved to Pivot Point Park in 2007. For those who would love more information, a short bio of the engine’s history can be found here.

About the photo: This image was captured with my Samsung S7 cell phone, the “work” phone that is soon to be retired as I transit from one volunteer position to another in the Civil Air Patrol. Though it’s becoming cantankerous in its nearly four years of service, it still takes a decent photo and it has served me well in capturing hundreds of cellpics since April 2016. I use Flickr’s automatic download to transfer the images for backup and download my choices for Cellpic Sunday from there. This image was first tweaked in Lightroom 6 for basic editing and then transferred to Luminar Flex for the final edits.

John Steiner

9 comments

  1. Interesting looking train! Up here in Coal Country “Coal Was King”. It was for a long long time. Never seen a train engine such as that one.

    • I was chatting with a steam train engineer in Scottsdale recently about fuel for those old steam engines. He commented that the southwest doesn’t have much coal and shipping was more expensive than fuel oil back in those days. That took me by surprise.

  2. Great pic as always…

    When I worked for the Padres, the Assistant General Manager and I would drive from San Diego to Peoria for the beginning of spring training. We swapped seats in Yuma. Fond memories of a life that almost seems as if it belongs to someone else.

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