Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns

LAST EDITED ON Nov-14-03 AT 03:12 PM (EST)

Tim (tryagin) asked me if I would go over and photograph the trolley barns in Sellwood, about 5 miles south of Portland, before the wrecking ball hit. He asked me on Sunday night. Since I had the Veterans Day holiday off, it was an ideal opportunity to go over there. The weather cooperated and what I found can only be described as tragic. Demolition had already begun. About half of the buildings had already been demolished by the time I got there. The pictures below speak for themselves.








Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, OR
(My email is in my profile)Columbia Gorge Route (Phase 1-- The end is in sight but I'm going the wrong way!)

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RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., century242, Nov-14-03, 04:44 PM, (1) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., tryagin, Nov-14-03, 04:47 PM, (2) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., philmoberg, Nov-16-03, 11:34 AM, (3) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., tryagin, Nov-16-03, 04:55 PM, (4) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., philmoberg, Nov-16-03, 07:46 PM, (5) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., dvdhoven, Nov-17-03, 02:09 PM, (6) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., ssw, Nov-30-03, 11:08 AM, (7) RE: Demise of Portland Traction Trolley Barns..., tryagin, Nov-30-03, 01:02 PM, (8)

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Looks like they wanted the buildings down ASAP, they were even working on an important national holiday. As was said on another forum about the demise of these buildings, some one wanted them out of sight and out of mind before the outcry becam e too great.Regards,
Erik Pierson
Sacramento, Cawww.sacramentolocomotiveworks.com

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Cal, thanks again for going there and taking these photos and sharing them. Well, now I at least know what color the inside walls were. :-IBelow are a couple pix from Happier days:

Inside Stall "A", that which appears in the first and 4th of Cal's pix.
Just outside Stall "A", sits the 1049, of the Portland Railway Light & Power Co, about 1924.There are many historic buildings meeting the same fate as these old piles. The Carbarns were a part of my life in Sellwood and they are gone. But as Wayne Campbell said to me, at least we have MSTS to recreate the places and the atmosphere of times past and maybe we can preserve their memories - just a wee bit. Timtimmuir@wcn.net

Electric Railroad 3D Models
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It's always a sad thing to see this sort of thing happen. While it's true that the construction of some electric railways was shortsighted, the abandonment of many more of them was at least as shortsighted.In what has been describes as "a delightful irony," we've live long enough to see this come full circle. This is a picture of a building that was built in 1926 to service buses, that is now being converted to service streetcars on the new Canal Line in New Orleans... -Phil

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Phil, this is indeed delightful, and warms the cockles of this old heart! Thanks for posting the "flip-side" of this story. Bravo, New Orleans! Timtimmuir@wcn.net

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It gets better, Tim. This is the third in the series of what they're building-from-scratch to run on it. Opening day is 06 DEC 03 (officailly)!A route approximating the old St. Claude Line has completed the EIS process, and the connection is already built-in to the new Canal Line trackage. These are delightful days, indeed in the Crescent City... -Phil

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LAST EDITED ON Nov-17-03 AT 02:12 PM (EST)

Hi,It is always great to read those stories. Great they rebuild these cars and that "carbarn". The roof construction looks very interesting.And here in the Netherlands are some electric inter urbans abandonend in the fifties and sixties. And now they regret those decisions and attempts are made to rebuild some in a modern way. Which is of course a difficult and expensive process.Dick van den Hoven

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Tim- At least you knew what was coming. The Borg (UP) came in w/o notice and scrapped the old SSW turntables in Hearne and Tyler. So much for historical preservation.Surely two tourist lines somwhere needed turntables...

Bradley Linda
Waco, Texas
I Support MSTS IRC Chat. http://chat.dtimsts.vze.com
Member #3, Trainorders Refugee Association - http://evans.railfan.net/TORA.htm

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Yah. Greed, the impatient and paranoid aquistion of money for temporary reasons, has destroyed more than enough historical places.
And the Sellwood story keeps going: The roof trusses were supposed to go to the Oregon Electric Ry Historical Museum in Brooks, Oregon, for a new carbarn they are building. But before the deal was finished the demolition crew smashed them to pieces......Timtimmuir@wcn.net

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