Albany & Eastern shortline upgrading infrastructure Someday, the 36-mile Albany & Eastern shortline run between Lebanon and Mill City, Ore., might be open to passengers, local newspapers report. But not without a lot of extra effort. Freight rails and passenger rails are held to different standards, said owner Rick Franklin of Rick Franklin Corp., speaking at the official groundbreaking ceremony for a rail rehabilitation project on the shortline run. Franklin said it took crews three days of work to prepare 3/10ths of a mile of track for a two-minute passenger ride to take city and county officials to the groundbreaking site. Workers had to change out ties, add rock, inspect all the rail joints and resurface and tamp everything down. “There’s a potential,” Franklin said, of someday running a tourist line. “There is interest.” For now, however, the railroad is concentrating on rehabilitating the bridges on the 36-mile line in order to triple the shortline’s freight capacity. “It’s a huge deal for the mills,” said Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist, one of the officials on hand for the ceremony. “Frank Lumber and Rob Freres were really going to be on the ropes for getting their products to market if this line failed. Saving the jobs you’ve got, in this environment, is pretty important.” But brothers Colton and Tristan Huntington, 6 and 9, of Crabtree and Tristan’s friend Austin Weaver, 10, of Scio were glad the railroad went to the trouble of creating a tiny passenger line. The three watched a truck dump a ceremonial load of gravel in the railway bridge culvert on Highway 226 east of Cold Springs Road, then took advantage of the caboose ride back to the staging area.
The line east from Lebanon didn't look all that great when I railfanned that area 2 years ago. IIRC, the spur from the main to the Rick Franklin salvage yard looks really rough. It's good to know the line is getting rehabbed. Is the AERR still running those tan & green locomotives the Roots brothers had? I knew they had a ragged-looking SP Geep that was down to its last wheel-turning, and it was to be rebuilt & repainted.
Yep still got a couple of the green ones. The ex SP GP has been repainted into a nice black and orange job.
