The narcissist’s guide to trainspotting.
Amtrak has opened a new station in Oregon City, Oregon. I knew that they'd been planning on building a station, and had read about some arguments over the cost of building the concrete platform for the station, but was unaware that the station was opened until we were driving back from a U-pick blueberry patch near Canby, Oregon and spotted the brand new signs pointing our way to the railroad station.
Since it was a railroad station, that meant it had something to do with railroads, so we had to detour off the main road to go and see it.
I was unaware of the station code for this station, but, probably to differentiate themselves from the hated liberal bastion north of the Clackamas Curtain, the station code was helpfully plastered all over every available sign and banner on this just-opened station.
If the local newspapers ever have an article about a mysterious robbery where someone took nothing but the signs from the Oregon City Amtrak station, it will be difficult to mount a defense.
It turns out, too, that you can catch a train from Union Station to Oregon City, for a $4.00 coach fare. If the Oregon City station was actually in downtown Oregon City and Union Station was actually close to where the businesses are in downtown Portland, it might actually be a more convenient commute (21 minutes, at $8.00 r/t) than driving into Portland and paying $15 dollars to park your car for the day. As it is, I can forsee at least one family trip where the bears and I will ride into darkest Clackamas County by train, just so we can say that we did.
Oh, and we arrived at the Oregon City station just before train #507 was scheduled to arrive, so we waited until it made its station stop before we went on our way. The train was late, so the best and I wanted to leave before it got there, but the bears would have nothing to do with that sort of talk, so we stayed until it pulled out 15 minutes off time.
