Locomotives of the Portland & Western Railroad are moved around the Albany yard on Dec. 23, 2025.
Putting aside the perennial grumbling about noise and delays, we in Albany should be glad we still have functioning railroads to watch as they work, relieving highways of some of the burden of moving heavy freight.
I was thinking of that the other day when I got the news that trains have stopped running on the historic Siskiyou line across the mountains on the southern Oregon state line.
On Dec. 11, the Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad ran its last train on the line from Weed, Calif., north to Ashland. It was a long train. It started with 38 cars and picked up 14 empties in Hornbrook. Then the whole train, four locomotives and 52 cars, chugged across the mountains to Ashland and Medford.
It was the last train — at least for the foreseeable future — because CORP’s main customer at the south end of the line was gone. Roseburg Forest Products announced on Dec. 3 that its veneer mill in Weed was closing, with the loss of 140 jobs.
CORP had been transporting veneer from Weed to another mill in Riddle.
Bob Melbo, the ODOT rail planner, recalls that the line between Montague, Calif., and Ashland was reopened in November 2015 after a seven-year closure. In an email he wrote:
“About $10 million was spent to reopen the line, $7.1 million of which was a federal TIGER IV grant successfully sought by a coalition of private and public partners with ODOT’s Region 3 in the lead. Region 3 oversaw the rehabilitation work and as activities wrapped up during summer 2015 the Oregon Transportation Commission okayed expenditure of the remaining funds in the Industrial Rail Spur Fund (around $70,000) for the project.”
Melbo added, “With loss of the veneer moving between Weed and Riddle, train service over the Siskiyous is likely to end as well.”
What happens to the line now?
“Here’s what I can tell you,” CORP spokesman Tom Ciuba told me via email. “As of now, we will continue to maintain and occasionally run the line (operating to Ashland).”
I asked him to elaborate, but so far I haven’t heard back.
On a hot summer day some 50 years ago, on a Southern Pacific freight with a caboose, I once got a ride on that line across the mountains from Ashland south to Yreka.
Trains no longer have cabooses. (Or is it cabeese?) But I still like trains.
Which is why it’s good to be in Albany, where you can still watch railroads at work. Like this: (hh)
Living four miles west of Tangent in Oakville, we’re about a mile from the old Oregon Electric line. You rarely see a train, and if you do it’s almost always at night. However, a few weeks back at 2:00 in the afternoon there it was: two beautiful Albany & Eastern engines pulling eight cars northbound. Probably doing no more than 25mph. It was nice to see.
I grew up with train whistles in the summer night air in the 1960s. We lived in SW Albany off of Liberty and 24th, within easy ear shot of the mainline through Albany. Our home then had no AC and so the windows were open all night. I loved the sound of the horn at the crossing, probably the one on Queen, several times a night, and the clickity-clack of the train on the rails, lulling me to sleep.
Interesting. I recently watched a short video from “Railfan Dan” on YouTube offering up a “preview” of an upcoming long version of the last train on the Siskiyou line. Some amazing drone shots of the CORP train you describe: https://youtu.be/pMMuN60kau0
The train you photographed in your post looked like the Toledo Patch arriving Albany yard in the afternoon. Probably six units.
That just might be. They often use slugs on that line.
And, if anyone is interested, this short video popped up on my YouTube feed featuring some history of the Siskiyou line and the Central Oregon & Pacific railroad. https://youtu.be/8KLEB4S2Ccs
Enjoy trains, or whatever you fancy, “while” you can….not just “where you still can,” Hasso. This country is on the ropes. I just now, as I was putting my recycling out on the curb in the dark at 9 p.m., watched my neighbors pull out of their driveway (with their 3 grammar-school aged kids) with a smallish U-Haul trailer in tow. They are leaving in the still of the night. They left all the lights on in their rented house, probably to ward off squatters, and their recycling and trash bins full. Sad…those kids being uprooted in the middle of the school year. Reminds me of the OPB/NPR special on the Great Depression that I watched a while back.
It’s too bad the Cascades doesn’t run to Ashland a few days a week.
Just this morning I heard a rare loud train whistle near South Albany High School.
I thought of you Hasso, and also how rare it is we get a loud whistle near the tracks by the Mennonite Home line…I am never bothered by them… and it’s something you get used to quickly if you live near a switching line.⁸
I grew up about a mile east of the main line south of Halsey and have fond memories or long freights, STEAM ENGINES, pulling loads that were about a mile long and sometimes had another engine pushing.
During the summer months there were frequent fires alongside the tracks and extending out into fields ready to harvest caused by sparks from the engines. The local fire departments in rural areas were really efficient in putting those fires out without too much loss. These departments were all volunteers and when the fire siren went off they left work, where ever that might be and went to the fire.
Sleeping outside in the summer was always nice because every engine seemed to have it’s own individual whistle sound.