Backwoods Railroads: Branchlines & Shortlines of Western Oregon

In the 1990s, a freight train rolling over a middle-of-nowhere feeder track on its way to or from a rural railroad town is almost an anachronism. These lines often host only one train a day or two trains a week. The branches and shortlines are evolving. Routes are drying up, being taken out of service, sold or leased to new owners. Many routes are endangered, and once gone will be gone forever....Throughout Oregon, the names of "outback" railroad stations read as if they belong in an atlas of obscure places: Tolo. Mountain Fir. Ashahr. Minto. Siltcoos. Canary. Narrows. Suver. Dry Creek. Timber. All that links these places is a network of remote rail lines. And as obscure as these locations are, they would be even more obscure without the railroads if they existed at all. Many towns in Oregon can trace their beginnings to the whims of railroad presidents and their surveyors... generations ago. Read more