Special Features

This page is being Deprecated — Its contents are being distributed, or made in to new pages. We leave its bones on line here for reference through 2023.

The Infamous Corbett Ramp

The Corbett Ramp Myth

Brier Place Trench

The Brier Place Trench is so special, it now has its own page! [LINK]

Massive Retaining Wall along contemporary I-5

Why was this wall built? Hint: Something to do with the Fulton Park Trolley and the later Oregon Electric Railway...

OE/I-5 Retaining Wall

WOODEN TRESTLE FOR OREGON ELECTRIC RY

The 1909 Sanborn map below shows a WOODEN TRESTLE FOR ELECTRIC RY. Sanborn maps were made by an insurance company in order to assess risk of fire for insurance purposes, ergo the wood structure is shown, but not steel rails. This is from Sanborn Maps, 1909, Sheet 179.

Sanborn Maps, 1909, Sheet 179, showing WOODEN TRESTLE in the location where the Red Electric line passed.

We think this 'WOODEN TRESTLE FOR ELECTRIC RY' was for the Oregon Electric. Could it have been a remnant of the F Line, or perhaps used by the N-S Line?

I-5 Construction Notes

We intend to submit an information request to ODOT for any reports filed containing a pre-construction pre 1960 survey of the I-5 corridor from the Terwilliger curves through the Corbett Ave exit. What was topography before the construction? What written survey notes or inventory of the right-of-way were made? For example, we know there was a massive retaining wall constructed for the Oregon Electric railway along there. SO, a decision was made to leave the wall in place (till 2010 anyway). Perhaps older trestles piers were removed, and so on. A topographic survey should show what the land was like south of the Fulton Park community center and garden area. What TOPO did they use, or make for the project?

Accidents and Delays

The trolleys to the SW cemeteries didn’t always run smoothly. There were accidents and mishaps that at the very least delayed service, but were sometimes serious enough to be reported in local newspapers. The Metropolitan’s F Line had a particularly serious accident in its second year of operation, with eleven of thirteen passengers injured, two severely. On Oct. 16, 1891, as detailed in the Morning Oregonian, an open trolley was traveling “at the rate of twenty miles an hour” on a downgrade, then started “careening wildly” as it approached a curved trestle somewhere between 2nd Avenue and Fulton Park. The trolley jumped the track and ran along the pedestrian walk before crashing through the guard rail and plunging thirty feet into a ravine. Because it was an open trolley, many passengers were able to jump out before the plunge, but others apparently were carried down with the car. There were no known fatalities, despite the paper’s rather graphic descriptions of some of the injuries. Passengers and at least one reader indicated that the motorman was driving too fast and recklessly, already a frequent complaint along the new hilly route.

Decades later, a more humorous incident unfolded on the N-S Line to Fulton. In the 1930s, near the end of that line’s history, the brakes on an empty trolley car “let go” during a motorman’s break at Corbett and Bancroft. As reported by Richard Thompson in Portland’s Streetcar Lines, the trolley rolled downhill on Corbett and up the slight grade to Nebraska, rounding that corner and rolling down to Virginia, where it crashed into Porcelli’s grocery. Fortunately there were no passengers aboard, and no bystanders were hurt.

In addition to runaway streetcars, the lines cutting through the hills south of Portland-proper were plagued with landslides, iced-up wires, snowstorms, and floods. Then there was Portland’s customary cold and wet weather, which could make riding the open cars uncomfortable. Mechanical and logistical delays, as well as disagreements with conductors about tickets not being honored for transfers, resulted in some disgruntled passengers through the years.

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The Trolley Project, Portland, Oregon.