After a very restful night and a continental breakfast at the Days Inn, I walked over to the 82nd Street MAX station and purchased a day pass for my free day of fun in Portland, riding east to Gresham where I boarded a waiting Blue Line to Hillsboro.
The trolley on the right brought me here and the one on the left which will take me away. I boarded for the trip to the Washington Park Station deep inside Robertson Tunnel then took the elevator 243 feet up to the surface. Across the street was the entrance to the Portland Zoo, where I had to pay admission to the zoo in order to ride the train. After I waited for a tiger to finish cleaning himself, I walked to the station.
The Washington Park and Zoo RailroadThe history of the WP&Z dates back to the early 1950's, when the Portland Zoo Commission decided to relocate and expand the zoo's grounds in Washington Park. The zoo had outgrown its existing grounds near the site of the present-day Washington Park station. The commissioners envisioned a train as part of the new attractions. The commission eventually settled on a track gauge of 30 inches between the rails. While this was still much narrower than the regular standard gauge, it still set the zoo railway apart from other amusement park-style trains. And its eventual construction and operation even drew the willing participation of the full-scale railroads that operated into Portland.
The construction of the zoo railway proceeded alongside that of the zoo itself. The original one and one-quarter mile loop around the zoo grounds was the product of hundreds of hours of work, many of it volunteer effort, by railroaders whose companies operated into Portland. These included the Spokane, Portland & Seattle, the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific. Even before the first train moved, over 25,000 people had assisted or contributed to building the railroad.
Some 200,000 passengers rode the 5/8 scale train that summer and the magnificence of the Zooliner rolling down the tracks heralded the prosperity of this post-war era. The Rose Garden Loop opened in 1960, a 20-minute ride through a Douglas fir and red cedar forest. The railway was at this time 2.5 miles long. At the Washington Park Station, the scenery opened to views of the city and Mt. Hood beyond. Everyone agreed it provided the most spectacular ride of any recreational railroad in the nation.
The strategy was for ticket sales to provide funding not only to sustain the railroad but to build the zoo and care for the animals. The railroad was the Golden Goose of the zoo and has continued to generate more funds annually than it takes to operate. The railroad has carried more than 7 million passengers and is beloved by multiple generations of Oregonians.
The trains of the Portland Zoo Railway, as it was originally known, actually debuted in two separate locations. The Steam Train and the Zooliner were among the featured attractions at the 1959 Oregon Centennial Exposition. The Circus Train began regular operations on the original zoo loop in Washington Park. The Centennial Exposition, which celebrated Oregon's first 100 years of statehood, was held on the grounds of what is today the Portland Expo Center near the Columbia River. The entire rail operation, which included the trains, track, signals, buildings and other infrastructure, eventually found its way to the West Hills, much of it going into the 1960 Washington Park extension.
The Portland Zoo Railway expanded beyond its original loop in 1960, when construction crews laid a two-mile extension from the zoo downhill to a site next to the park's famous Rose Gardens and Japanese Gardens. Again, Portland's other railroads came to lend a hand. Crews from the Southern Pacific and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle laid down the track, while Union Pacific crews hauled the ballast for the roadbed. Metro took over running the zoo from the city of Portland in 1976. It managed the railroad as well, including the trackway to Washington Park.
Trains loop around the station from right to left and usually stop for about five minutes. Multiple train operations allow passengers to disembark here and visit the gardens, then reboard a later train back to the zoo, or board here, spend time at the zoo, then return. The right-of-way follows a three percent grade from the gardens area up to the zoo, a fairly steep climb for any railroad. The route includes many twists and turns, including a horseshoe curve, and also utilizes short passing sidings to allow several trains to use the line at the same time.
One of these, Siding 3, is visible from Kingston Road, which also connects the zoo area with the gardens. Its location next to the park's Big Meadow is easily accessible and provides a good train watching and photo spot.
The track to the left leads to the original zoo loop built in 1958, while the track the train is using leads downhill to the 1960 extension. A wye connects the trackage. Trains on the zoo loop return to the station on the overpass above the crossing.
The WP&Z holds another distinction, that of a United States Mail carrier. The railroad began carrying mail under contract June 13, 1961, a practice that actually continues today! The railroad has its own postal cancellation stamp, which it also uses on special events such as the railroad's anniversaries and birthdays of some of its special animals. It was one of the first recreational railroads to have its own postal cancellation, and today is the last one operating with its own cancellation to continuously offer mail service.
My RideThe Aerotrain came out of a tunnel and into the station. As I had my ticket taken, I told the crew member that I was from Trainweb.com and writing a story and he told me to meet the engineer afterwards, but I could walk to the front and photograph the train at the Zoo station.
I boarded and photographed our train preparing to leave.
The view from the front of the train. After a few pictures I returned to my car.
Zooliner 2 was built in 1958 and was modelled after the mid-1950's Aerotrain built by General Motors, and reflects the automobile-like styling GM incorporated into the full-sized original. The cars on the Aerotrain, for example, were actually copies of its then-standard 40-foot municipal bus body.
We left on time at 11:15 AM and passed the Oregon Express waiting for its next chance to run.
The train ran beneath the main bridge into the Zoo before making its way across the grounds until it passed through a gate and out into Washington Park.
We ran through the forest, twisting and turning along the hillsides, where glimpses of downtown Portland could be seen through the trees.
There are two passing tracks on the way to the Rose Garden station.
The Zooliner passing through the very unspoilt forest.
The Zooliner arrived at the Rose Garden station, where I briefly detrained.
The Zooliner at rest. We returned to the Zoo but took a new route once inside.
On the return trip, we went by the main shops before passing the elephant exercise area, looping around and passing it again before we returned to Zoo station, where I detrained, thanking the crew for a fantastic trip. They then offered me an opportunity to walk up to the shop to see and photograph of anything I wanted.
The Oregon Express, led by Washington Park and Zoo Railway 5 was built in the 1940's by the Milwaukee Locomotive Company and acquired by the Zoo from the Portland Machinery Company in 1958. No. 5 was the original construction locomotive, named "Casey Pioneer", used for laying the original portion of the Zoo Loop track in the zoo in 1958. It operated at the Portland Zoo in 1959 while the other two locomotives and coaches were operating at the Oregon Centennial. It was made to look like a steam train at that time and called the Circus Train.
It was later rebuilt a few times to a relatively more modern style, with a slanted front end. The color scheme and decorative motif of the train have been changed a few times, as has the train's name, which has gone from the "Casey Pioneer" to the "Circus Train" to the "Astroliner" to the "Orient Express" to the "Oregon Express". The diesel wore its most recent coluor scheme of medium blue, with gold striping similar to that found on locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad.his locomotive has four associated passenger coaches.
Washington Park and Zoo Railroad shops.
Switcher 3 built in 1959, was acquired from Weyerhauser and designed to look like an EMD switcher.
The "Oregon" 4-4-0 1 is a 5/8-scale replica of a classic American 4-4-0 steam locomotive of the 19th century. It was built in 1959 by the Oregon Locomotive Works and is a scale copy of "Reno" of Nevada's Virginia & Truckee Railroad. Unlike the original, No. 1 "Oregon" uses oil as a power source, but it is still a real steam locomotive and weighs about eight tons. It first carried passengers on June 20, 1959, on the temporary Centennial Exposition line in North Portland, but was moved to the then-new Portland Zoo site around the end of the summer, when the exposition ended.
This locomotive has four associated passenger coaches built at the same time and were designed to resemble the early twentieth century open-air excursion cars that resembled those of the Portland Electric Transit Company. They feature a clerestory roof with transom lights. Each car has a step rail to access the swinging doors. The body panels are constructed in a lattice of horizontal boards attached to a vertical board framework.
The steam locomotive's original frame broke several times during its first two decades, but a new frame was built in 1982. The "Oregon" was taken out of service in August 2002, in need of extensive other repairs, and was almost retired and relegated to static display, due to lack of funds to pay for the repairs. However, donations resolved this problem, and the locomotive was overhauled and returned to service on April 2, 2004. Nowadays, No. 1 is normally only scheduled to operate on a few busy weekends per year, including Memorial Day weekend and Laboir Day weekend, but is also brought into use, as needed, to meet demand for train rides on weekends that have a particularly high number of visitors to the zoo. It is also normally used during the annual "Zoo Lights" event, held between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.
I thanked the train crew for everything, included my private shop tour then visited the Zoo gift shop before returning to the Robertson Tunnel where I took a trolley back to downtown Portland.
The Portland Streetcar ExtensionI detrained at 10th and Yamhill to walk around the corner to wait for the Portland Streetcar, boarding a crowded Skoda-built trolley from the Czech Republic with many other people at the Portland Library stop. Most were on their way to restaurants for lunch but I had other motives for being here, mainly because since my last visit to Portland, the line had been extended to River Place. I found a seat and rode north then west to the Good Samaritan Hospital, returning east, then south, through downtown to the former end of the line at Portland State University.
The extension opened in early 2005 and my new trackage started as we turned left onto SW Harrison Street with new stops at SW 3rd and SW 1st. We turned right above SW Harbor for the River Place stop then descended the hill, turning left at the bottom onto SW River Parkway before rolling to the present last stop at River Parkway/Moody station.
The Portland Streetcar dropped me off at River Parkway/Moody station.
The streetcar then turned onto SW Moody Street so the operator could switch ends.
The streetcar returned to the station to pick up the waiting passengers and I returned to Library station, where I transferred to a MAX Red Line trolley for the journey back to 82nd Street and the Days Inn. Union Pacific's Gresham Line runs by there with several trains a day and I could see them from my room, which kept things interesting. I relaxed before going to Elmer's for another Prime Rib dinner then packed for my trip home via Tacoma and Seattle.
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