Location in Portland, across the river from downtown | |
Established | 2012 |
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Location | Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
Coordinates | 45°30′26″N122°39′42″W / 45.507306°N 122.661722°W |
Type | Railway museum |
Owner | Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation |
Public transit access |
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Website | www.orhf.org |
The Oregon Rail Heritage Center (ORHC) is a railway museum in Portland, Oregon. Along with other rolling stock, the museum houses three steam locomotives owned by the City of Portland: Southern Pacific 4449, Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700, and Oregon Railroad & Navigation Co. 197, [1] the first two of which are restored and operable. [2] The center opened to the public on September 22, 2012. [3] The project to establish the center was led by the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation (ORHF), a non-profit organization, which was renamed from the Oregon Heritage Steam Foundation in 2002. The non-profit Oregon Steam Heritage Foundation was formed in 2000. The museum site is in Southeast Portland. [4]
ORHF was tasked with finding a new home for the three city-owned steam locomotives and other rail equipment, after planned changes by Union Pacific Railroad (UP) made it apparent that the locomotives would need to be moved out of their longtime home in the UP's (formerly Southern Pacific's) Brooklyn Roundhouse ( 45°29′30″N122°38′43″W / 45.4916°N 122.6454°W ), which was a 1941-built [5] roundhouse in Brooklyn Rail Yard in Southeast Portland's Brooklyn neighborhood. ORHF comprises several partner entities, including non-profit railway preservation and railfan groups as well as the city's Bureau of Parks & Recreation. [6]
Proposals to construct a new enginehouse to house the historic locomotives were expanded to encompass a visitor area and eventually an interpretive center. After considering other potential sites for an enginehouse, ORHF reached a lease agreement in 2009 on a site near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), [7] encompassing about 3 acres (1.2 ha). [1]
Ground-breaking for the 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) [5] enginehouse took place in October 2011. [8] The three steam locomotives were moved to the site from the Brooklyn Roundhouse on June 26, 2012, [9] and were temporarily placed outdoors, awaiting completion of the enginehouse. With the house fully enclosed (though not completed), the locomotives were moved inside on July 28. [10] Several vintage rail passenger coaches were moved to the site from the Brooklyn Yard (surrounding the roundhouse), where they had been outdoors, and they will continue to be kept outdoors at the new center. The budget for the initial phase of construction was $5.9 million, and funding has come mainly from donations, but with the City of Portland loaning $1 million. [9]
The Brooklyn Roundhouse was demolished in early September 2012, but the Brooklyn Yard's 1924 turntable, built by American Bridge Company, was removed and placed in storage. A major fund raising effort has since resulted in the turntable components being updated and restored for service, and a new pit excavated and completed at ORHC. As of October 2023, installation of the turntable is nearly complete and operational at ORHC. [11]
The Oregon Rail Heritage Center opened to the public on September 22, 2012. [3] As of early 2023, it is open for visitors Thursday through Sunday, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., [4] with no admission charge. [9] Donations are welcomed.
The centerpieces of ORHC's collection are three steam locomotives owned by the City of Portland: Southern Pacific 4449, Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700, and Oregon Railroad & Navigation Co. 197. All were donated to the City of Portland in 1958 and were on static display near Oaks Amusement Park at "Oaks Pioneer Park" until the mid-1970s [12] or later. No. 4449 was moved to the Burlington Northern Hoyt Street Roundhouse in 1974 for restoration and proceeded to become famous nationwide, when it hauled the American Freedom Train throughout much of the country during the United States Bicentennial celebrations of 1975–76. [2] [13] It was thereafter stored and maintained at the Brooklyn Roundhouse between excursions. SP&S 700 moved to the roundhouse from Oaks Pioneer Park in 1986, and OR&N 197 followed in 1996. [2] SP&S 700 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [14]
Union Pacific Railroad diesel switcher locomotive No. 96 was added to the collection in 2016, donated to ORHF by UP. [15] It is an "SW10-class" locomotive, built originally as an SW7 in 1950 by Electro-Motive Diesel (and originally numbered 1821) and rebuilt as an "SW10" by UP in 1982. It arrived at the ORHC in 2017.
Another diesel locomotive switcher was donated to ORHF by the BNSF Railway in 2022. This is unit No. 3613, an EMD SW1000 unit built in 1972. [16] It was restored off-site and moved to the ORHC in October 2023.
In May 2023, the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society donated a 1941 Davenport Locomotive Works built 20-ton, four-wheel gas mechanical switcher locomotive SPMW No. 570, which served nearby at Southern Pacific's Brooklyn yard, to ORHF. It is being restored off-site.
The most recent steam locomotive to join the ORHF collection is Mount Emily Lumber Company Shay 1, which was donated by the Oregon Historical Society in September 2022 to ORHF. It was moved to the ORHC from the City of Prineville Railway in February 2024. [17] [18] The locomotive was moved inside the Oregon Rail Heritage Center in October 2024 to begin restoration work. [19]
Several pieces of private or non-profit partner group owned rolling stock also reside at the center, including other locomotives and several vintage passenger and freight cars. [9] One of the locomotives previously was Nickel Plate Road 190, one of two surviving ALCO PA locomotives left in the United States. This PA locomotive was sold in March 2023 to Genesee Valley Transportation, and was moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania in April/May 2023.
Public facilities at the enginehouse are to be minimal initially, consisting of a few exhibits and an area where restoration work on the locomotives and other equipment can be observed, but ORHF plans to install a full interpretive center later, [20] on the building's future second floor. [9]
The operational steam locomotives are occasionally used on excursion trips, including an annual Holiday Express, [13] and the new enginehouse was sited and designed in such a way as to enable these trips to continue. The rail cars also have access to Oregon Pacific Railroad (OPR) tracks along the Springwater Corridor at this location. [21] However, beginning in Fall 2022, the Holiday Express trips on the Oregon Pacific Railroad will be handled by smaller logging-oriented steam locomotives, as the SP 4449 and SP&S 700 locos are too heavy and long for current track conditions. Union Pacific Railroad's north–south main line runs past the building, and is connected to the Heritage Center's tracks, allowing the locomotives and other rail cars to be moved onto or off of the mainline tracks.
The Southern Pacific was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company.
A railway roundhouse is a building with a circular or semicircular shape used by railways for servicing and storing locomotives. Traditionally, though not always the case today, these buildings contained or were adjacent to a turntable.
Brooklyn is a mostly residential neighborhood in southeast Portland, Oregon. It sits along the east side of the Willamette River in the vicinity of Reed College. Founded as a neighborhood in the late 1860s, the neighborhood today is a middle-class area comprising mainly single family homes, interspersed with remaining industrial sites along the river and a large railyard. This railyard was home to Southern Pacific 4449 as well as several other large antique steam and diesel-electric locomotives.
In rail terminology, a railway turntable or wheelhouse is a device for turning round railway rolling stock, usually locomotives, so that they face the direction they came from. It is especially used in areas where economic considerations or a lack of sufficient space have served to weigh against the construction of a turnaround wye. Railways needed a way to turn steam locomotives around for return journeys, as their controls were often not configured for extended periods of running in reverse; also many locomotives had a lower top speed in reverse. Most diesel locomotives, however, can be operated in either direction, and are considered to have "front ends" and "rear ends". When a diesel locomotive is operated as a single unit, the railway company often prefers, or requires, that it be run "front end" first. When operated as part of a multiple unit locomotive consist, the locomotives can be arranged so that the consist can be operated "front end first" no matter which direction the consist is pointed. Turntables were also used to turn observation cars so that their windowed lounge ends faced toward the rear of the train.
The Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway was a railroad in the northwest United States. Incorporated in 1905, it was a joint venture by the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway to build a railroad along the north bank of the Columbia River. The railroad later built or acquired other routes in Oregon. The SP&S was merged into the Burlington Northern in March, 1970. Remnants of the line are currently operated by BNSF Railway and the Portland and Western Railroad.
Steamtown National Historic Site (NHS) is a railroad museum and heritage railroad located on 62.48 acres (25.3 ha) in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the site of the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The museum is built around a working turntable and a roundhouse that are largely replications of the original DL&W facilities; the roundhouse, for example, was reconstructed from remnants of a 1932 structure. The site also features several original outbuildings dated between 1899 and 1902. All the buildings on the site are listed with the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Yard-Dickson Manufacturing Co. Site.
The Southern Pacific GS-4 is a class of semi-streamlined 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotive operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) from 1941 to 1958. A total of 28 locomotives were built by Lima Locomotive Works (LLW) in Lima, Ohio, with the first batch of 20 built between March and May 1941, while the second batch of eight were built between March and April 1942. The initials GS stands for Golden State or General Service.
Southern Pacific 4449, also known as the Daylight, is the only surviving example of Southern Pacific Railroad's GS-4 class of 4-8-4 Northern type steam locomotives and one of only two streamlined GS class locomotives preserved, the other being GS-6 No. 4460 at the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri. GS is an abbreviation of General Service or Golden State, the latter of which was a nickname for California, where the locomotive was used to operate in revenue service.
The Washington Park & Zoo Railway (WP&ZRy) is a 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge recreational railroad in Portland, Oregon's Washington Park with rolling stock built to 5/8 scale. Opened in three stages in 1958, 1959 and 1960, it previously provided transportation between the Oregon Zoo, Hoyt Arboretum, International Rose Test Garden, and the World Forestry Center. The extended line through Washington Park, now out of service but still in place, was about 2 miles (3.2 km) long. The service is currently operating on a 1⁄2-mile (0.80 km) loop completely within the Oregon Zoo grounds. The railway carries about 350,000 passengers per year.
Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700 is the oldest and only surviving example of the class "E-1" 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotive and the only surviving "original" Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway steam locomotive. It was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in May 1938. Nearly identical to the class "A-3" Northerns built for Northern Pacific Railway, it burns oil instead of coal.
Samtrak was a heritage railroad that operated in Oregon from 1993 to 2001.
Spokane Portland and Seattle Railway's E-1 class was a class of the only three 4-8-4 locomotives built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1938. The E-1 class "Northerns" were very similar to the A-2 through the A-5 class "Northerns" on the Northern Pacific Railroad built by Baldwin from 1934–1943. Visually, the locos are near-identical. The only difference is that the Northern Pacific Railroad 4-8-4s burn coal and the 4-8-4s on the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railroad burn oil.
Oregon Railroad and Navigation Co. 197 is a 4-6-2 "Pacific" type steam locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1905 for the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N). Since the OR&N was controlled by E.H. Harriman at the time, this locomotive bears a strong resemblance to Southern Pacific locomotives of the same era, since the Southern Pacific was another E.H. Harriman controlled railroad. It has been owned by the City of Portland since 1958, and since mid-2012 it resides at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center where it can be viewed by the public.
The Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation (ORHF) is a registered non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States. Composed of a partnership of several all-volunteer non-profit groups dedicated to maintaining regional vintage railroad equipment, the ORHF was initially formed "to secure a permanent home for the City of Portland's steam locomotives, preserve the Brooklyn Roundhouse, and establish a Rail and Industrial Heritage Museum.”
The Brooklyn Intermodal Rail Yard is a 110-acre Union Pacific rail yard in southeast Portland, Oregon, stretching from Powell Boulevard to Bybee Boulevard and operating since the 1860s.
Polson Logging Company 2 is a 2-8-2 “Mikado” steam locomotive built by Baldwin in 1912. It was originally built for the Saginaw Timber Company to pull logging trains. After that, it went through several ownership changes throughout both the steam era and the preservation era, before it was purchased by caretaker Skip Lichter in 1982. Lichter restored Polson Lumber 2 to operational condition and loaned it to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wisconsin. The engine was later removed from service in 2000 to undergo a federally-mandated rebuild. Disagreement over who should cover the restoration costs ultimately led to an arbiter finding in Lichter's favor.
Mount Emily Lumber Company No. 1 is a three-truck or 'Class C' Shay steam locomotive that was originally owned by the Mount Emily Lumber Company. It was built in 1923 by the Lima Locomotive Works and delivered to Lima's Seattle dealer, Hofius Steel and Equipment Company of Seattle, Washington. It was later sold to the Independence Logging Company of Independence, Washington, and then it was later sold to the Mount Emily Lumber Company of La Grande, Oregon. When it was retired in 1955, it was donated to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Three years later, in 1958, it was donated to the Oregon Historical Society of Portland, Oregon. The engine was operational at Cass Scenic Railroad and the City of Prineville Railroad for many years. It was announced in 2022 that the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation would be the new owners of No. 1.
The Union Pacific classP-2 was a class of 4-6-2 "Pacific" type steam locomotives that were built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works originally for the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N) in 1905.