The Spokane Portland & Seattle Railway, then the Burlington Northern, and now the Portland Western Railroad pays Charlie Strathmore a salary to watch over the tracks running through Spearwood. His house faces the line. Charlie took up oils to pass time, painting the railroad from his porch, and recorded six decades of Spearwood history. Some of us have been collecting his work since 1955. In early Strathmore, wood chip hoppers and log flats roll behind diesel switchers, and the weekend pleasure train between Portland and Seaside is pulled by a steam engine. Viewers can follow shifts in light, cloud, and shade as the seasons change. The trains are centered in frame, as permanent as mountains in the landscape, until daytime trains stop running. In middle Strathmore, the skies are black. The headlights of unidentified engines cut cones through the night and tank car numbers float specter-like in blackness. Although Charlie Strathmore retained his documentary style, the middle paintings might as well be abstracts. They are not the prized pieces in our collections. Lately we’re begging Charlie to paint what he remembers. He’s a great artist, we tell him, not a photographer. Charlie shrugs, shoos a moth from his canvas, then goes on painting track removal equipment.