OPPOSITE: As clouds roll across the foothills of the Cascades, Portland & Western’s American Turn rolls north through the fields near Harris- burg, Ore., on February 17, 2009. TOP: Framed by the covered bridge at Harris, the Toledo Hauler heads west on the evening of June 29, 2008. ABOVE: The Harbor Turn nears Banks on the afternoon of June 17, 2011, as Oregon’s iconic Mount Hood looms in the distance.
great number of shortline and regional railroads have learned to survive and even thrive on the “A to B” and “Y to Z” segments of the transportation business. Oregon has several such railroads, and
the biggest is the Portland & Western, a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming, Inc. The P&W operates more than 500 miles of former Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern lines in Oregon. Southern Pacific built its empire in Oregon with timber-hauling branches that wandered all over both sides of the Willamette Valley. As revenues slid and costs rose on many of those lines, SP spun off its Toledo and Westside branches — plus several shorter branchlines that came off the Westside line — to G&W’s Willamette & Pacific in 1993. Two
years later, G&W formed the Portland & Western to take over SP’s remaining branchlines in Oregon. Both operated as sister companies for the next five years, until G&W combined them under the Portland & Western banner in 2000. The P&W acquired its first former Burlington Northern route in 1997, the Astoria Line from Portland to Astoria. The last major addition came in 2002, when P&W signed a long-term lease of BNSF Railway’s other branchlines in Oregon, which included most of the former Oregon Electric Railway, an interurban line that connected Portland and Eugene.
Power and Operations Portland & Western’s all-EMD locomotive roster consists of about
40 units. Most are second-generation models, including 17 GP39-2s from the Santa Fe. There are two slug sets with GP40P-2 mothers that are normally assigned to the Toledo Hauler. P&W also has some first generation units, which typically work yard and local jobs out of Albany and Eugene. Most of the fleet wears G&W’s orange-and-black color scheme, but about one-quarter of the roster has never been repainted. Trains on the Portland & Western operate out of three primary hubs — Tigard (just southwest of Portland), Albany, and Eugene — although individual jobs go on and off duty all over the system. Let’s look at the three major concentrations of activity.
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