Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Beaver State Rails

At the request of a fellow commenter at the (unofficial) California High Speed Rail Blog, I have created another railroad map, this time for Oregon. Comments:
  • The map is comprehensive but not complete.
  • I've included the interurban lines of several systems, but not their local streetcar lines.  Additionally, no strictly urban streetcar systems are included.  This might seem like an arbitrary division, but interurbans often hauled freight (in small amounts) whereas streetcar systems almost never did.   Thus, the distinction.
  • No modern transit systems are included.  Right-of-ways abandoned by their original operator and reused later by a transit system are shown as abandoned.
  • For some logging railroads, I have only found brief descriptions of their general location, and have not been able to figure out the exact alignments.  These are drawn with simple, straight lines.  I may remove them in the future if I cannot find more information about them.
  • Temporary logging spurs are not included.
  • A number of abandoned lines are submerged in various reservoirs around the state.  I've drawn lines through the water, but they are not at all accurate.
  • Colors are as follows: green = BNSF; brown = UP; blue = everybody else; red = abandoned standard gauge; orange = abandoned narrow gauge.
  • Because of the limitations of GMaps, the content is split over several pages.  I've arranged the lines from north to south, but I have no control over where the breaks occur.  If an area you would like to look at is on two different pages, try flipping back and forth.  The page breaks aren't fixed, so all of the lines you want to see may (or may not) end up on the same page.

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