Trolley Hazards and Hassles
The trolleys to the SW cemeteries didn’t always run smoothly. There were accidents and mishaps that at the very least delayed service, and at their worst included injuries and one known fatality. But no accident was minor enough to escape reporting in the Morning Oregonian, which is the source of all the following stories.
Fender benders
Mishaps downtown were common, not surprising given the burgeoning streetcar traffic. The first recorded incident on the Metropolitan Fulton Park line, in July 1890, involved the literal clash of different technologies. A Metropolitan car ran into a horsecar at the intersection of 1st and Grant streets, knocking it off the tracks to the tune of $200 in damage, but with no human injuries except a woman who had to be escorted home in a state of shock. The motorman blamed himself, as he was chatting with a passenger and forgot to ring the bell. That same month, a rather bizarre accident occurred when a blacksmith’s wagon tongue jutting out into 2nd Street knocked the conductor and one passenger off the open trolley.
A fatality and a plunging car
Farther south, in August 1890, a much more serious incident resulted in the death of a 30-year-old Metropolitan conductor near the Fulton Park end of the line. At the “second trestle bridge” (possibly where the Vermont viaduct is now) the conductor reached out to adjust a curtain for a passenger and his head struck an electric pole, knocking him off the car and down 125 feet to the bottom of the ravine. He was rescued but died on the way to Good Samaritan hospital.
Accidents continued into 1891, with a minor streetcar and wagon collision on the Corbett Street bridge in January when the wagon tried to pass a trolley and didn’t notice another car coming in the other direction. This is notable to us because it’s our only indication that the bridge was shared by streetcars and other wheeled traffic, as well as pedestrians. Two downtown incidents later in 1891 involved a collision with a cable car at 2nd and Alder, and a possible lightning strike starting a brief motor fire at Madison Street.
The most dramatic and controversial accident on the Fulton Park line happened on Oct. 16, 1891, with eleven of thirteen passengers injured, two severely. As detailed in the Morning Oregonian the next day, an open trolley was traveling “at the rate of twenty miles an hour” on a downgrade, then started “careening wildly” as it approached “the first trestle south of Second Avenue.” (Second Avenue, not to be confused with Second Street downtown, is now SW Bancroft Street, and the trestle in question is most likely the one crossing Corbett Gulch.) 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, which landed against “several tall pine trees.” There were no fatalities, despite the article’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 problem along the hilly route, judging by letters to the editor.
Disgruntled passengers
While the open car seems to have saved lives in this case, there were ongoing complaints about the Metropolitan’s windowless cars, which may have led to at least a couple of the mishaps above. In any case, they were uncomfortable in the cold, rainy season, and according to one account in a March 19, 1892 Morning Oregonian article, “A lady who is obliged to travel daily over the line of the Metropolitan Railway Company, complains bitterly of the open cars which the company has been using of late. She says the last two morning have been foggy, and she is just recovering from a severe attack of la grippe, brought on, perhaps, by open cars.” There’s no evidence of any passengers dying as a result of the airy cars, but the trolley company soon added locally made convertible cars to its fleet to ensure comfort year-round.
Passengers found other reasons to be disgruntled, whether it was mechanical or logistical delays, speeding motormen, arguments with conductors about transfer tickets not being honored, or the eventual increase of the beloved 5¢ fare to the cemeteries to 10¢.
Neither was the Metropolitan immune to sabotage, as reported in an August 27, 1891 Oregonian article. “Some contemptible scoundrel” dumped rocks into the electrical components of a funeral car, thus delaying a trip to River View Cemetery by a half-hour and requiring another car to push the funeral train. In a report on the funeral itself, the Oregonian suggested that it was “the work of mischief-makers who are endeavoring to cripple the service through personal motives.”
Winter ice and landslides
Portland’s weather was Enemy #1, threatening to close the Metropolitan down from the start. As mentioned in our FP Line section, the first months and years of the line’s existence were a challenge due to ice, snow, floods, and landslides. No sooner had the Fulton Park line started running to much fanfare on the last day of 1889, but freezing weather caused a shutdown on January 11, followed by landslides that had the line down more than it was up for the rest of the month. Water for the boilers at the Fulton Park powerhouse was scarce because of the freezing temperatures. Once a couple of workarounds were in place, including a hydraulic ram to pull water up from Stephens Creek, heavy rains mocked the efforts.
The Metropolitan had carved their right-of-way out of the hillsides south of the city limits, and the rain turned those slopes into mud that covered the tracks north of Fulton Park. Much of January and February 1890 were devoted to clearing the tracks after each slide so as to minimize stoppages. In September 1890, when the ground was stable, crews began to “take down the steep banks along the tracks before wet weather in order to prevent landslides,” according to the faithful Oregonian (Sept. 1, 1890). For more on how the Oregon Electric dealt with landslides along this same route, see our page on the OE/I-5 Retaining Wall [LINK].
In subsequent years, especially 1894, floods disrupted service downtown and threatened the power supply at Fulton Park, and lightning struck both the Fulton powerhouse and the east side powerhouse that was replacing it. Coupled with the economic effects of the Panic of 1893, such setbacks strained the bottom line of the series of companies that owned the Fulton Park Line during the ten years of its existence. In many ways, it is a wonder that service to the cemeteries lasted as long as it did.
The flatlands not so flat
When the N-S Line along Corbett and Virginia replaced the FP Line in 1900, the tracks were on more solid ground at a lower elevation. Still, human error and mechanical failures no doubt persisted, though we haven’t researched these thoroughly. One mishap during the line’s waning years was reported by Richard Thompson in Portland’s Streetcar Lines. Sometime in the 1930s, the brakes on an empty trolley car “let go” during a motorman’s break at Corbett and Bancroft. 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 the front of Porcelli’s grocery. Fortunately there were no passengers aboard, and no bystanders were hurt.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city…
While no photos or drawings exist of FP or N-S line accidents, there were two fatal accidents on the east side during the 1890s that warranted thorough newspaper coverage. Portland’s worst streetcar tragedy was in 1893, when seven East Side Railway passengers perished after the popular “Inez” car plunged into the Willamette River from the Madison Street Bridge. The conductor was found to have braked too late on icy tracks after discovering the bridge was open for a riverboat. Another fatal accident, in 1897, involved the City & Suburban Railway, which had bought the FP Line that same year. A car with a broken axle jumped the track on an East Morrison trestle and dived into the Asylum Slough, killing four people.
