Oregon Electric Railway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Oregon Electric Railway was an interurban railroad line in the northwestern United States that linked Portland, Oregon, to Eugene, Oregon. Service from Portland to Salem, Oregon, began in 1907. Jim Hill's Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway purchased the system in 1910, and extended service to Eugene in 1912. Regular passenger service along the Willamette Valley ended in June 30, 1933, though freight operations continued and the railway survived into the 1990s (ultimately as a Burlington Northern feeder). (Operation as an electric railroad ended July 10, 1945.)

BN operated the last freight train on the Portland-Beaverton segment of this mainline on December 31, 1994, in preparation for the construction of Westside MAX, part of the TriMet light rail system.

[edit] Remnants

Long stretches of track from Tigard to Salem are now owned by the Portland and Western Railroad, as is a short spur line in Beaverton.
The former station in Eugene has been reused and is now the Oregon Electric Station (OES) restaurant.
The Albany station is now a pizza parlor.
The Multnomah depot was located at the current site of the John's Market parking lot, on the northwest corner of SW 35th and Multnomah Blvd. The adjacent 1913 Nelson Thomas Building, characterized as "streetcar era commercial" architecture, still stands.^[1]
The two buildings of the North Bank Depot in Portland were the northern terminal for the OER. They were preserved and converted into condominiums in the 1990s.
The site of the Tigard station is now occupied by the Tigard chamber of commerce.

[edit] References

(May 1995), "Freight out, light rail in", Trains Magazine, p. 24.
The Spokane, Portland and Seattle, by Charles and Dorothy Wood (Seattle, Washington: Superior Press), 1974
Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest, by Carlos A. Schwantes (Seattle, Washington: University of Seattle Press), 1993