OREGON’S TIMBER-HAULING SURVIVOR
BY SCOTT LOTHES/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR W
HEN THE WIND IS RIGHT in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley, you can hear locomotive horns for miles. South of Albany, along Union Pacific’s former Southern Pacific main line, you can sometimes be in one town and hear a train blowing for crossings in the next town up or down the line. And every once in while, you might hear a train that’s running on another railroad altogether.
A couple of times per day, the horns
belong not to a long-haul UP freight or Amtrak passenger train, but to a local freight on the regional Portland & Western Railroad. From the UP main, head west across the fields on the sparsely traveled blacktop or gravel of rural county roads until you come to
28 MARCH 2016 •
RAILFAN.COM
another set of tracks. The train you’re likely to find there will take you back to the basics of Oregon railroading — and back to the basics of railroading itself. Trundling against a backdrop of the Cascade foothills and the valley’s ever- changing sky is the P&W’s American Turn — one or two orange geeps and a handful of boxcars, centerbeams, and covered hoppers. This is loose-car, branchline railroading at its fundamental best. The cars are just starting or about to end their journeys, and most come from the state’s two primary industries — timber and agriculture.
Timber, especially, fueled western Oregon’s once-sprawling network of branches. The timber business these days is down from its peak, but it’s still
the bread-and-butter of P&W’s balance sheet, and soul of the railroad’s identity. You can still see the occasional big lumber drag heading south for California on the UP main, but if you want to understand where those cars come from, slow down, leave the mainline, and amble over to the P&W.
railroading today is often described as a “B to Y” business. North America’s big railroads have streamlined their networks to focus on the great efficiencies in the long midsection of the haul, often leaving the beginning and the end of the journey — the “A” and the “Z” — to other modes. Trucks often handle these parts of the trip, but a
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About the Portland & Western I
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