Here's an article about some local rail improvements - sort of an island of good news in a sea of embargoes, washouts, slides, and floods this year in Oregon. (See online story for photos.) <http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2007/12/new_train_yard_heralds_westsid.html> Photo caption: Local officials took a short trip in a vintage rail car on a secton of the Westside Express Service, a Washington County commuter rail line opening in September. Photo caption: A locomotive busts through a ceremonial banner to open a new train switch yard in Tigard that will help clear the tracks for commuter rail. New train yard heralds Westside commuter rail by The Oregonian Tuesday December 11, 2007, 7:09 PM TIGARD -- As a rule, the guys on the Portland & Western Railroad make it a policy not to run their locomotives into things, but they steamed one through a banner Tuesday to open the Tigard switching yard that clears the rails for 2008's Westside Express Service. The four-siding yard southeast of town concentrates the railroad's switching into one area -- and that should be good news for local drivers, too, who are often stopped at rail crossings while freight cars are shuffled and sorted. The yard was a joint project built with a $2.95 million grant from Connect Oregon, the lottery-bond-initiative that invests in non-highway transportation projects, and $738,000 from the railroad. "It's a good deal for everybody," said Bruce Carswell, president of the Portland & Western. "This is an integral part of commuter light rail, because we'll be over here out of the way when they're running 34 trains a day down this track starting next September. And it allows us to consolidate our freight switching, which was previously spread out between sidings in downtown Tigard and near Fifth Street in Beaverton." WES, the Washington County commuter rail line, is due to open September, the first commuter rail line in Oregon and one of the few suburb-to-suburb commuter lines nationwide. The line will run 14.7 miles from Wilsonville to Beaverton with stops in Tualatin and Tigard. About 50 people showed up for the banner, uh... drive-through, including Tri-Met project director Steve Witter, state representatives Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, and Suzanne Bonamici, D-West Slope, and the governor's transportation advisor, Chris Warner. "When Governor Kulongoski conceived Connect Oregon in 2005," he told the crowd, "This is exactly the kind of project he had in mind." He held up Seattle's gridlock as a grim alternative to making strategic investments in Oregon's transportation system. The group then embarked on a pair of vintage rail cars -- a 1924 office car and the Ranch Car, a 1950s Western-themed lounge car/dinette that was once part of Great Northern's Empire Builder -- for a short trip on the main line. It's been extensively rebuilt for commuter rail service and the rails rest on 600-pound concrete ties instead of wood, making a more rigid railbed and a markedly smoother ride. "Feel that?" asked Mark Hammons, whose company supplied the ties. "All of sudden the train isn't rocking side-to-side like it does on wood ties." A smoother ride will be welcome enough to Carswell, whose railroad has had to move its 28,000 carloads a year through the area while crews rebuilt track, crossings and bridges. "It's been a heck of a project," he said. "You know what highway construction is like for a highway user, so multiply that times ten. We don't have any alternate routes -- it's not like we can put out some orange cones and run trains around the work sites." John Foyston; johnfoyston@news.oregonian.com
