To those with an interest in railroad history in the United States, mention of the words "narrow gauge" may bring to mind the extensive three-foot-gauge railroads of Colorado and Utah or perhaps the famous two-foot-gauge lines in Maine. However, few would think first of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Nonetheless, between 1877 and 1893, an extensive narrow-gauge railroad developed in Oregon" one that had aspirations of crossing the Cascade Mountains and connecting with the Central Pacific Railroad, thus giving Oregon its first access to the transcontinental railroad system. It is this railroad system, from its inception in 1877 to the present day, that Ed Austin explores herein.

"Most of us have felt the fascination of seeing a steam locomotive with smoke drifting back over the line of cars it pulled, as the whole train wound through tall Western mountains. Whether we have actually experienced it or not, and many have, we know such a thing existed and that it is now part of a past that we can't touch again. But in Stations West, Edwin Culp comes close. With four hundred eighty photographs, carefully collected over a period of more than twenty years, he presents an exciting graphic history of Oregon railways from their beginnings to the present. Following the tracks as they were laid, from the Willamette Valley to the Oregon desert, he illustrates, in all its many facets, a heritage which has passed"--

A reflection of the effects of highways--and their hugely subsidized trucks--upon railroads, and of the incompetence of the Southern Pacific. The trucks took much rail freight on the coast, the SP--partly through government rules & inertia--failed to meet the competition; many lines were closed, most of the rest were sold to small, hungry, competent firms. This is the story. It is well told in a style familiar to rail fans: lists of stations, engine rosters, control blocks. Abundant photos, a few in color. Current through the visit of the X2000 in mid-1993. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In 1922, the US Forest Service offered one of the largest timber sales in the agencys history, encompassing 890 million board feet of mostly Ponderosa pine timber in the mountains north of Burns, Oregon. Among other requirements, the sale terms required the successful bidder to build and operate 80 miles of common carrier railroad through some of the most remote and undeveloped country in the state. The Fred Herrick Lumber Company and its Malheur Railroad initially won the bidding, only to lose it when a crash in the lumber market forced the company into insolvency. The Edward Hines Lumber Company of Chicago picked up the pieces, and from 1929 until 1984, its subsidiary Oregon & Northwestern Railroad made a living hauling logs, lumber, and occasional livestock between Burns and Seneca, Oregon.

In 1883, railroad financier Henry Villard brought Portland and the Pacific Northwest their first transcontinental railroad. Earning a reputation for boldness on Wall Street, the war correspondent turned entrepreneur set out to establish Portland as a bourgeoning metropolis. To realize his vision, he hired architects McKim, Mead & White to design a massive passenger station and a first-class hotel. Despite financial panics, lost fortunes and stalled construction, the Portland Hotel opened in 1890 and remained the social heart of the city for sixty years. While the original station was never built, Villard returned as a pivotal benefactor of Union Station, saving its iconic clock tower in the process. Author Alexander Benjamin Craghead tells the story of this Gilded Age patron and the architecture that helped shape the city's identity.