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The Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad
It continues to be dependent on much of the same lumber traffic that sustained the Southern Pacific for over seven decades and is also an important transportation connection to the small communities it serves. The line the Port of Tillamook Bay operates today was originally opened in 1911. After traffic began to dry up in the 1970s and early 1980s the SP decided to rid itself of the line, which it partially accomplished in 1983 and in 1990 the Port purchased the entire branch. Today, along with the railroad’s freight operations it also operates a tourist train, which has become quite successful over the years due to both the extremely breathtaking topography as well as the fact that the Port of Tillamook Bay is likely the only diesel locomotive in America painted as your common Holstein dairy cow, (GP9 #101)! Having said that, though, this scenery does come at a price. Operating in the Pacific Northwest can have its disadvantages as many who live there know, especially with the very wet climate the region experiences, which often times results in slips and mudslides, making the right-of-way very difficult to maintain (one particular reason, among others, that SP wanted rid of the line). Through it all, however, the railroad has pressed on, especially after a 1996 flood that nearly shutdown the railroad altogether. Today, behind a fleet mostly consisting of six-axle SD9s (which can better negotiate the tight curves and without damaging the light rail found on the line) the Port of Tillamook Bay continues to haul freight for a community that very much depends on its small railroad.
To give a brief history of the railroad which originally built and owned the trackage that the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad operates today, the Southern Pacific's lines in Oregon were famous (and still are) for being extremely rugged and difficult to operate through. The SP itself has such a history that entire libraries of books could be written on the differing aspects of the railroad. It was by far the country’s single largest classic railroad (i.e., before the modern-day merger movement began in the 1950s), spanning over 15,000 miles and reaching from the northwest Oregon to southeast Louisiana! For all of the railroad’s wealth and prosperity traffic pattern shifts and poor management would prove costly to the Southern Pacific. During the 1970s the lucrative automotive traffic and industrial base in San Francisco began to disappear. Where once the SP dispatched several trains in and out of the city daily, in just a few years much of this traffic had dried up as industry there closed it doors to either move elsewhere or take operations overseas. It was also during this time that another rich source of traffic, produce, grown in the fertile valleys of California began to move their business to trucks. This was partly due to SP’s ever-worsening transit time for the delicate product, which must make it to market extremely quickly before it begins to rot. At one time the Southern Pacific had a sprawling network of branch lines and spurs that seemingly reached every field and farm in the region. However, by the 1970s and especially the 1980s these were either rusted over or pulled up as the business had disappeared. By the 1980s the railroad was able to pick itself up but was eventually purchased by the Denver & Rio Grande Western, which assumed its name, in 1988. And, eight years later the Espee became yet another part of the Union Pacific system.
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