PORTLAND'S STEAM LOCOMOTIVES GETTING NEW HOME:
[Oregonian website report, 11-1-09]
It's musty, cold and damp inside the old Brooklyn Roundhouse in the Southeast Portland rail yards. The roof leaks, metal scrap is everywhere and the smell of oil is pervasive.
But despite that, the once-grand roundhouse is home to hidden treasure - three oil-fired steam locomotives owned by Portland taxpayers and maintained by volunteers. Two of the engines are in working order and among the six largest steam engines operating in the world.
Today, the place is inaccessible to the public, but there are plans to change that. By 2012, the steel beasts should be on display in a new roundhouse near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Eventually, an interpretive center will be built there, too.
The Portland City Council last week lent a helping hand. The council agreed to allow the Parks and Recreation Bureau to lend the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation up to $1-million to secure a piece of property with the understanding that the loan will be paid back with interest. Money for the new roundhouse, estimated at $3.5-million, will be raised by private donations.
Doyle McCormack, president of the nonprofit foundation, a consortium of railroad history groups, said the Union Pacific's need for space in the Southeast Portland rail yard necessitated the move. But he said it will finally allow people to get close to the engines.
"This is history," said McCormack, 66. "These are the machines that made America."
The foundation has been negotiating with the railroad for about four years on land near OMSI and was close to closing on the property when TriMet decided it needed the land for the planned eastside streetcar line. The transit agency and the foundation worked out a straight trade.
The foundation next year will get a larger piece of property to the southeast, under the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard viaduct, for its new roundhouse. Timing is critical, McCormack said. The foundation will have about a year after that deal is done late next year to move the locomotives.
It will be worth the effort, he said. "When you fire one of these things up, it's the closest that man has come to creating life," he said. "Each one has a personality. They're warm. They have a heartbeat.
"That's the magic that the people of Portland should have the right to experience."
[Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen, 11-1-09, from Oregonian website report]