The following story is courtesy of Finn J.D. John - Offbeat Oregon
The Oregon Electric railroad line: State's past, and future?
The plush rail service left artifacts along its lines after being made obsolete by the popularity of automobiles.
The Pirtle transfer station on the Oregon Electric Railroad line just south
of Albany is now derelict and covered with graffiti. Note the "O" and "E" in
the upper corners. (Finn J.D. John)
By Finn J.D. John —
March 22, 2009
About two miles south of Albany city limits, at the edge of a
field dotted with grazing sheep, is a derelict building in a stand of
trees beside a lonely stretch of railroad track.
It's tall, square and classical-looking. In fact, it looks like
the shell of something that was once very impressive. And it's about
200 yards from the nearest road -- a tiny rural lane that sees perhaps
two cars an hour at most.
This is Pirtle Station, a transfer station on the Oregon Electric Railroad line that once connected Portland to Eugene.
The Oregon Electric was launched in 1907 as a short passenger
line running from Portland to Salem. Five years later, the line was
extended with great fanfare to Eugene.Electric railroads were taking
the country by storm at the time.
While a steam train had to include a heavy, expensive locomotive
pulling a long string of cars to be cost -effective, an electric could
consist of one car, with an electric motor between its wheels. The
only trouble was, you couldn't send the power more than a hundred miles
or so, or the voltage would bleed off. So using electricity only
really worked on short, local lines between cities.
This video was made by Charles Turner at www.darewehope.org during
a haircut at the shop of Ivan "The Hairable" Tadic, a Portland history buff
with a particular interest in the Oregon Electric line. Tadic remembers the
line when it was operating, in the 1930s.
On the Oregon Electric, the coaches were plush and comfortable,
the service fast and dependable -- and, powered entirely by
electricity, cheap and easy to maintain. The future looked bright for
the new rail line.
Of course, it wasn't. The same year it was launched, Henry Ford
created the automotive assembly-line system that would result in
thousands of inexpensive Ford Model Ts crawling all over Oregon within a
decade. The better cars became, the fewer people chose to ride the
rails. By the time World War II ended every passenger electric railroad
in Oregon, from the Oregon Electric to the streetcars in Portland, had
died for lack of business.
The Oregon Electric itself shut down electric operations in
1945, but by then it was exclusively hauling freight. It went from
making almost $1 million in 1920 to $17,313 in 1932. The following
year, when the Public Utility Commission held a hearing to end
passenger service on the line, only six people came.
But you can still see plenty of evidence of what it was like, all along the line.
Of course, in Eugene there is the Oregon Electric Station
restaurant. This famous eatery occupies the station built there after
the line came to Eugene in 1912; it's a Georgian Revival building with a
very distinctive triple-arch facade, and there are a couple of the old
coaches outfitted as dining areas. It's been lovingly restored to its
original glory.
In Albany, the station -- only slightly less fancy -- is now
home to Ciddicci's Pizza, a place with deep roots in the community, at
which one can pore over pages from old Albany high-school yearbooks
varnished over on the tabletops.
But the indirect effects of the Oregon Electric line are much
more pervasive today. This cheap, fast service from Portland made the
south Willamette Valley accessible to thousands of people who otherwise
wouldn't have come. It's no accident that the towns it went through
became some of the biggest in the valley.
Ironically enough, all commercial railroads are electric today.
The difference is, the electricity is no longer sent over wires to the
trains; the power is generated in the engines by massive diesel
generators.
(Sources: Johnson, Emory R.
Elements of Transportation. New York: Appleton, 1909; Culp, Edwin D.
Stations West: The Story of Oregon Railroads. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1972; www.oes-restaurant.com; www.pdxhistory.com)
