Yes, when I first saw that photo (some FORTY-THREE years ago on the back of a 1966 WP timetable), I concluded that it was an eastbound, based on the scarring of the hillside in the distance and a belief that it was the pre-dam right-of-way.

Fast forward to present day, where we now have aerial photos from GOOGLE and MAPQUEST, and I am mostly in agreement with you that it is, indeed, a westbound. It wasn't until this discussion that it occurred to me that I could use the aerial photos to answer some old questions (and raise some new ones). If it's a westbound, I STILL haven't been able to figure out where the photographer was standing. He's quite a distance above the water level (ruling out a boat), but the aerial photos don't show a land mass that he could have been standing on. IF the train was an eastbound, there IS a steep hillside that could have furnished him with the spot he needed when he tripped the shutter.

For a westbound, maybe he was in a hovering helicopter. Your comments about the lake vs. river water levels has validity, but if the picture appeared on WP's 1962 annual report, could Lake Oroville have arrived at "full pool" that quickly?

Maybe one of these days I'll just have to go up there and explore things firsthand. By matching the distant hillside(s), it wouldn't take long to arrive at a 100 per cent conclusive answer.