Western Railroad Discussion > Steep Pull out of Arlington, OR

The UP Condon Branch out of Arlington, OR at one time ran all of the way to from the Columbia River at Arlington up to Condon, OR where it interchanged with the Condon, Kinzua and Southern Railroad. The only part of the branch remaining is the first 11 miles from Arlington up to the garbage reload site at Gilliam where UP takes its unit trains of trash and contaminated soil from the Seattle area and off of the Puget Sound and Pacific from the Shelton reload. Today, this branch sees near daily traffic with power much larger and trains much heavier than it ever saw in previous days. The operating challenge of this line is that steep grade from the river at Arlington climbing up Alkai Canyon to reach the plateau where the reload is located at the old site of Roddy. The first few miles of the line is on a 2.2% grade. Prior to UP placing DP units on their trains, the contract operator many times took the trains up the grade in 2 sections.

Thanks for looking and for any comments!
Robert W Scott



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/17 11:24 by robertwscott.

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Robert, thanks for the posting!   I find it interesting that the Portland metro area trucks their garbage east while Seattle trains.   Arlen

Sweet!

Great shot of one of the few Portland jobs that I never worked! It's nice to put an image to the stories.

Nice pic!!