This Space for Rent

End of the line

Track is being laid on the North Macadam extension of the downtown trolley line, and the (temporary?) terminus is taking shape. If you look at the larger copy of the picture (just click on the little one), you will see that the new track is offset by about a foot from the old Red Electric line, and that they decided (because otherwise it would be easier to continue the line down towards Lake Oswego?) to plunk a line pole in right at the end of the track, so that a runaway trolley or truck can take out 400 or so feet of overhead without heroic measures.

If they'd have asked me (and they didn't, but that won't stop me) about what to do, I would have connected the new track to the Red Electric track, then given the Willamette Shore Trolley people trackage rights to run their cars up into the city so they could have a downtown terminal instead of the New! Improved! Out in the middle of absolute nowhere! terminal by the Old Spaghetti Factory headquarters; that way people would start to get used to the idea of being able to ride a train down to Lake Oswego (and perhaps even start to commute on them, if you were lucky enough to have working hours that matches the operating hours of the WST cars) before the City Of Portland got enough money to actually electrify the line ($10 million for overhead wire, $170 million to rip out the perfectly usable track and replace it with new track).