Railfanning the Seattle waterfront

Finally finished! Here's a quick guide to some locations and lookouts along the Seattle waterfront that are great for railfanning.

BNSF's mainline runs along Alaskan Way from Bell Street to Broad Street. After that, there are a series of parks that run next to the tracks. In addition to BNSF trains, you can spot Amtrak (Cascades and Empire Builder), Sounder commuter trains, and the occasional CN train.

The best views are either street side along Alaskan Way, or from the elevated sections of the Sculpture Park. If you want to go further, you can follow the trail north from the Sculpture Park to reach a pair of bridges over the tracks, and the Louis Dreyfus grain elevator and yard.

The parks are all contiguous, but the name changes a few times so it's a little confusing. The Sculpture Park is first, that turns into Myrtle Edwards Park, which turns into Centennial Park. It's about a mile and a quarter from the Sculpture Park to the Helix Bridge.

If you want a bonus, you can check out the Great Northern Tunnel's north portal. The mile long tunnel was finished in 1905, but from the 1950s until 2019 the north portal was hidden by the Alaskan Way viaduct. Since the viaduct's demolition, the portal has been visible from Victor Stienbruk Park and Pike Place Market. Although the park's viewpoint was closed when I visited in March, fellow YouTuber West Cascade Rail got some great footage of it here:    • A Rare Sight: Trains At BNSF's North Porta...   .

To reach the tunnel viewpoint, cross the Bell Street Overpass, then head south on Elliott Ave for about a quarter mile.

The tunnel's southern portal is near King Street Station; I have some footage of it here:    • Railfanning south Seattle  

Video footage recorded over several visits in February and March, 2021.

Clip listing:
0:00 - Intro
0:18 - Bell Street overpass
1:06 - GN Tunnel north portal
1:46 - Old streetcar line and Alaskan Way
2:50 - Puget Sound sealife
3:12 - Grain train with interesting power that I was too far away to film properly
3:49 - Sculpture park with northbound intermodal train
5:23 - West Thomas Street overpass, and BNSF power
6:22 - Helix Bridge and (another) BNSF power move
7:25 - One last power move, a large one led by a Cascades Green SD40-2
8:36 - Outro, riding the train in spain

Outro music: My Train's A Comin' by The Unicorn Heads, via the YouTube Audio Library.
Trolley photos from wikipedia.
Photo one by Oran Viriyincy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfr...
Photo two by Peter Van den Bossche, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfr...