Dec. 4, 2009

As noted in a public notice placed in the Oregonian newspaper, the POTB has filed to discontinue service between Cochran and Tillamook, which would in effect end a good portion of the line's Common Carrier status. Despite reports on other railfan boards, this is clearly not an abandonment, per se. Link to the notice: http://classifieds.oregonlive.com/?temp_type=detail&category=detail&tp=ME_olive&ad_id=340116379

Also, I have updated the Locomotive Roster to include the scrapping of five units in 2009. The 6113, 6156, 6157, 6178 and 6196 all met the torch this year.

An era has ended. In a notice posted on the POTB's official website, the Port commission, at a special meeting on the 16th, voted unanimously on two measures. The first was to discontinue freight service between MP 802 near Cochran and the Industrial Park in Tillamook. They also voted not to repair the rail line between MP 802 and MP 810 near Enright. That means that trains will no longer be traversing the scenic Salmonberry River Canyon. Estimates to repair the line after the December, 2006 floods had skyrocketed to close to $60 million, making the decision to shut down unfortunately easy.

What freight service - if any - will exist between Banks and Cochran remains to be seen, as there are currently no online customers on that portion. It's also not known how the closure will affect the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad's operations between Garibaldi and Wheeler, or what fate will meet the railroad's fleet of SD9's and GP9's almost all of which are all presently stored in or around Tillamook.

POTB has purchased 45-ton GE switcher 4501 from the Oregon Pacific RR for use as a work train switcher. I've added that unit to the active unit roster page. Also, according to a recent article in the Oregonian, repair estimates to get the POTB back up and running have topped $57 million, or about three times the original estimate, and aproximately 38 years worth of gross income.

I've updated the links section of the site to get rid of a bunch of missing or outdated links, and add a bunch of new ones. Hope you enjoy.

In anticipation of some planned changes to all of my sites, I have added an invisible hit counter to the front page to allow me to track stats and traffic onto this and my other sites. You probably won't notice too much, but if you are tracking cookies, you may notice that the site suddenly asks for one where is hasn't before. Don't be alarmed. Nothing malicious here. Just keeping track of the traffic the site sees, which I haven't ever done before.

On Dec. 1, Tillamook was lashed by a severe winter storm that dropped over 20 inches of rain on the Coast Range. The results were severe flooding, and, predictably, severe damage to the POTB. Comparisons are being made to the severe flood damage in 1996 that shut the line down for several months. Generally, the estimates are that the new round of flooding is more severe. As such, the line has been shut down until further notice.

The POTB has a slide show of storm damage photos on its home page at http://www.potb.org. There's also a news article with several photos at KGW.com. Let's hope that the line can be reopened again.

Though the new site isn't quite ready to roll, I have decided to spend a little bit of time tying the new and old sites together as best as I can, and showing off a little of what the completely remodeled site will look like. I hope you enjoy. For the interested, the final design that I have settled on will give all three of my sites a family appearance to them. If you haven't seen my other two sites, please visit them. They are:

The Railpower Green Goat Rosters, at http://www.trainweb.org/greengoats and

Luxury Under Glass: The Ultradome Experience, at http://www.trainweb.org/ultradomes.