The BNSF Railway’s Balmer Yard in Magnolia/Interbay appears to have closed. Nothing has appeared in the news yet — just in Facebook groups and railroading bulletin boards — but it looks as if over a century of railroad operations in the neighborhood has come to an end (with the exception of the BNSF main line, known here as the Scenic Subdivision).
More on the history of the rail yard and its namesake, Thomas Balmer (1888-1959), to come.
Born and raised in Seattle, Benjamin Donguk Lukoff had his interest in local history kindled at the age of six, when his father bought him settler granddaughter Sophie Frye Bass’s Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle at the gift shop of the Museum of History and Industry. He studied English, Russian, and linguistics at the University of Washington, and went on to earn his master’s in English linguistics from University College London. His book of rephotography, Seattle Then and Now, was published in 2010. An updated version came out in 2015.