POTB severely damaged

It would likely shut them down. There is, I suppose, the option of trucking, but the highways are mostly two lanes and from the standpoint of heavy traffic a little dodgy. This is still a relatively undeveloped state compared to, say, our neighbor to the South, California.

 

Here's another news article, this one from the Daily Astorian, and this one with some freight numbers...



<http://www.dailyastorian.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=398&ArticleID=47326>



Tillamook port cuts back operations

Published 12/8/2007 6:30:00 AM


TILLAMOOK - Severe storm damage totaling an estimated $20 million to the Port of
Tillamook Bay Railroad has forced Port officials to curtail outbound shipments of
lumber and inbound shipments of grains for local dairy farmers.



"The Port has issued a temporary embargo and informed all of our railroad customers
and others we work with that we will not be able to ship or receive railcars on our
line for the time being," said Port of Tillamook Bay Port Director Robert H. Van
Borssum Friday.



Van Borssum said that, immediately after the massive storm of Dec. 2-3, his crews
headed out to inspect the line.



The worst of the damage seen so far involves a section of railroad track in
Salmonberry Canyon east of Wheeler in the Coast Range.



"The good news is that all of our metal bridges are still upright and our tunnels
appear to be intact."



However, on Thursday, workers discovered that soil slippage in Salmonberry Canyon
had undermined a section of track roadbed, causing the track to sag and become
unusable.



In addition, he said, there is still a lot of debris on the tracks and one tunnel
has some earthen material at one end that appears to have fallen in from an external
slide adjacent to the tunnel's entrance.



Van Borssum said workers are still inspecting track and assessing the situation.



"We don't have the complete picture yet," he explained, "but the Port determined
that it would be prudent to issue an embargo now so no customers would have their
cargo lost in transit. The Port can rescind the embargo anytime in the future when
we have the problems under control."



The Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad operates 95 miles of track that stretches from
Tillamook into the western suburbs of Portland, where the line intersects with major
north-south rail lines. The route includes 17 metal bridges, several tunnels and a
number of wooden bridges.



The Port's railroad is the major shipping lifeline for Tillamook County's two major
lumber mills operated by Stimson Lumber and Hampton Affiliates. The timber business,
alone, sends approximately 250 cars loaded with finished product on its way to
market each month. While the railroad is out of operation, this could mean an
additional 750 to 1,000 truckloads each month will need to be sent to market over
local roadways, increasing shipping costs significantly to Tillamook County
industries, said Van Borssum.



In addition, from six to eight railcars of various grains for the production of
dairy feed come into Tillamook County each week.



"The Port railroad has been the primary means of grain delivery for the production
of high-protein feeds for the Tillamook County dairy industry," Van Borssum noted.



The Port railroad runs through the coastal communities of Tillamook, Garibaldi,
Rockaway Beach and Wheeler and Nehalem before heading over the Coast Range into the
Portland area rail interchange, where locally produced commodities are then
redistributed to other rail carriers and shipped all over the United States.



The Port of Tillamook Bay also operates an industrial park, airport and an
alternative energy bio-gas digester at its 1,600-acre site two miles south of
Tillamook on U.S. Highway 101.

 

can someone pleas show pictures of the damage
it is always sad when a line is shut down

 

RRfan,

I will post some when I find them. In the mean time, I posted a link on a previous post on this thread to similar damage in 1996.

Thanks for checking in on this. Right now it's looking like the state is committed to helping out with this so we'll see what happens. It's certainly more hopeful than it was last week.

Adam

 

Yeah, POTB is a fairly healthy shortline as former SP branchlines go.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't get a chance to ride their passenger trains and only barely saw the thing when living nearby.

I also remember how long and how much debate went into reopening P&W's line to Astoria. How many years did that Rockslide sit there before they finally decided to fix it?

I think CTC board di a nice photospread of the line a year or so ago before they switched owners.

 

the one in astoria looks bad

 

From what I remember from living in Beaverton, the only decent route over the mountains in the Portland area is US30, but that follows the Columbia/A line and ends up in Astoria which means a trip down the 101 and it's not THAT wide.

US26 to Cannon Beach/Seaside is 2 lane and twists around itself and is still far away. State 6 is even worse, but is the direct route.

And there is nothing more frightening then turning one of the hairpins and finding a Logging truck in barreling down on you.

 

Here's another news article. I don't know Special K's exact motivations (Special K equals Kulongoski, the Governor - it's a name my dad and I call him) for requesting the feasibility study of other transportation options, but I am kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt and figuring that he needs it to convince others that this is something we need to fund and fix.

The "major" roads over the coast range anywhere are little two lane affairs with intermittent passing lanes on some of them, but certainly no interstates or four lane highways. I suspect that once the state gets an idea of how much added highway maintenance they would need to keep up with all the trucks that they'll come through with some money to fix the Tillamook Branch.



<http://www.dailyastorian.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=398&ArticleID=47820&TM=54861.16>

Tillamook leaders unite to press governor to make railroad repairs a top priority

Published 12/21/2007 11:57:00 AM

TILLAMOOK - Key Tillamook County employers, including Hampton, Stimson and
Weyerhaeuser lumber mills and the Tillamook Valley Nutrition Feed Mill, joined with
Port of Tillamook Bay in urging Gov. Kulongoski this week to quickly address a
transportation crisis that struck Tillamook County when the Dec. 2-3 storm
devastated the port district's railroad.

Port officials and representatives from Hampton, Stimson, Weyerhaeuser and the feed
mill met with the governor and representatives from a number of agencies this week
to express the urgency of the problem.

During the meeting, the governor stated his desire to ensure the economic health of
Tillamook County, but said he wanted a task force to examine all options before
deciding what steps to take to restore rail service to Tillamook County.

Among alternative options that may be examined, he said, are shipping goods on the
POTB railroad to the Port of Garibaldi for transfer to ocean-going barges, or
constructing a new connecting rail line from some point on the POTB railroad to a
rail interchange with the short line that serves Astoria.

"Of course, we welcome an analysis of all rail shipping options," said Port Director
Robert Van Borssum after the meeting. "However, it is vital to our local economy
that the analysis be expedited so that rail service in and out of Tillamook County
can be restored as quickly as possible."

"This rail system is the sole provider of cost-efficient transportation of timber,
grain products and raw materials both to and from Tillamook County," Loten Hooley,
Port of Tillamook Bay board president, told the governor.

"The industries served by the railroad are the largest employers in Tillamook County."

State Sen. Betsy Johnson, who also attended Tuesday, said, "This railroad and its
customers are of paramount importance to Tillamook County. The discussion with the
governor was very frank. No conclusions were reached, because data is still being
collected in the wake of the storm. However, the governor was clear that he expected
some exploration of shipping alternatives before making any final decision."

Mills need urgent action

The lumber mill representatives expressed their commitment to their operations in
Tillamook County, but said rapid restoration of rail service is essential.

"We are committed to our Tillamook mill, but we are all faced with a tremendous
challenge ahead of us," said Hampton Lumber Mills CEO Steven Zika in a letter
presented during the meeting.

"The depressed market conditions coupled with the devastating storm damage to the
railroad, has put us in a difficult position."

Zika noted that the Hampton mill in Tillamook employs 225 people, with an annual
payroll of $15 million and a total annual economic impact of approximately $60
million. The mill ships 1,800 carloads of lumber via the railroad each year.

"Rail service is critical to maintaining the company's competitive position," Zika
said. "Trucking this lumber puts us in an uncompetitive position globally."

Two officials with the Weyerhaeuser Hardwoods mill in Garibaldi also drafted a
letter urging officials to resolve the situation quickly. The mill processes 32
million board feet of hardwood annually and ships half of it via the Port of
Tillamook Bay railroad.

Jeff Calavan, pallet sales manager, and Dora Croxford, business logistics manager,
said switching to trucks could cost the mill up to $320,000 a year. "The mill site
is 175 miles from a major highway and it is very difficult to attract enough trucks"
to take its loads, they said.

"Realistically, we would be competing with the other mills in the area for the same
trucks, and likely not be able to obtain sufficient trucking to move the products in
a timely or economic manner."

Damage to cable

Another player also affected by the storm damage is WCI Cable, a wholesale provider
of fiber-optic communications service connecting major Alaska markets to the
continental United States. It operates oceanic cables that make landfall at Nedonna
Beach in Tillamook County. One of its cables followed the POTB railroad right of
way.

According to WCI President and CEO Brian Roussell, the line sustained damage along
nine miles of its route, with at least one "hard break" in the Salmonberry River
canyon about 24 miles east of Mohler and 14 miles west of Timber.

Roussell said the WCI cable carries its own communications traffic to and from
Alaska and also carries traffic for Qwest Communications to northwest Oregon; for
Southern Cross Cables, which connects to Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand;
and for two other carriers that connect to Japan, South Korea, Mainland China and
Taiwan.

"At this time, all the networks are operational, but all are operating without any
(redundancy protection)," he explained. "It is imperative that the railroad be
repaired, allowing WCI and others to restore redundancy and protection to their
networks."

Feed mill facing 'serious hardship'

Troy Odvody, manager of the Tillamook Valley Nutrition Feed Mill, a major supplier
of feed to Tillamook's important dairy industry, said his mill received 90 percent
of its feed stock by rail prior to the December storm. He said the closure of the
railroad places a serious hardship on operations and will increase shipping and
offloading costs.

"I can only hope that there will be a quick solution," he added, "as our business
depends on it."

The 95-mile Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad runs along the coast from Tillamook to
Wheeler, then turns eastward over the Coast Range and interchanges with other rail
carriers near Portland.

The December storm washed out large portions of the rail bed in the Salmonberry
River canyon in the mountains east of Wheeler. Early estimates of damage were $20
million.

Since the storm shut down the railroad, the port has been forced to lay off 11 of
its 21 railroad workers. Van Borssum said additional layoffs of railroad personnel
may be necessary, depending on how long it takes the governor's task force to make a
determination.

According to the Oregon Department of Employment, Tillamook County, with a
population of approximately 25,000, has about 12,400 employed countywide. Timber and
mill operations represent 8.5 percent of the workforce and 13 percent of all wages
earned in the county.

 

Oh, there are certainly critics. We have the anti-everything crowd here, too. They are small but very vocal. Maybe some day they will all move to their own little island and then be anti-everyone else on the island and eat food out of tins and surround themselves with earthen berms with machine guns pointed at any possible intruders and quit barking about the rest of us trying to fix our roads and teach the next generation of workers and that sort of thing.

 

Just saw a copy of this mornings (22-12) Oregonion and right on the front page was the headline Rail Line Repairs Shakey. A photo of the track hanging in mid air accompanied the photo along with an article stating that it was in 1996 that $13 Million was spent on repair of the line and now the repair cost would be $20 million. The article quoted someone to the effect that the cost of rail repair would be better spent on four laning the Wilson River Highway. Another free ride for the trucking industry which pays next to nothing to keep the highways maintained.
The article alse mentioned connecting Tillamook to Astoria by building a line along the coast.
Just have to wait and see I guess.

 

That's interesting, except that the person quoted in the article is totally ignoring the reality that the terrain is tough for roadway and railway alike, and there's no guarantee that any four lane highway won't be washed out, undermined, or covered in a land-slide justlike the current ones are and have been since the day they were builts. The quoted source also conveniently ignores the fact that four-laning all that highway will cost way more than $20 millions, too. The state highway department spent lots of time and money getting the roads between the Willamette Valley and the coast reopened yet I guess that is just assumed to be the cost of doing business.

The trucking industry has been really successful in externalizing their main infrastructure costs to everyone else. A truer comparison of costs would be to compare the cost of repairing the rail line and resuming rail shipping versus the cost of truck shipping AND highway upgrades and ongoing maintenance.

The press in this state is abysmal.

I would personally LOVE to see an Astoria to Tillamook line. The POTB reaches up the coast as far as Wheeler, right on Nehalem Bay. The Astoria line USED TO go to Holliday, just south of Seaside. As I understand it, the vision was originally to continue on down the coast but those plans were scuttled/hindered/whatever by Harriman or his agents.

Adam

 

I must be in church and you must be the preacher, Ken because I am saying a loud AMEN!

There are a lot of great regular people in this state, but they spend too much time buying pat answers and listening to convenient excuses by those who pretend to be on their side. So many issues have so many more dimensions to them than simply a paragraph or two of background.

I seek out perspective by talking to what I call my elders, people like my grandparents, or the guy that my dad used to go beekeeping with who grew up loading logs in Coos Bay. Roads and railways have been washing out since they were first built and if you want to keep going you have to just rebuild them, and if you can find a way to better engineer it to avoid the same sort of problems, fine, but don't just sit their whining.

 

You have to think logically tho. They would have to completly build a new line from Tillamook to Astoria. The new line would probably cost millions more to complete. I Do not expect that to happen. As for the line being rebuild people are thinking the state is paying for the entire thing. As far as I know Tillamook county can recieve FEMA money for repairs. I worked for the POTB until the storm and that is what we were banking on. FEMA would pay 75% and all we would need would be 25% from the state. But we are waiting to hear back from FEMA whether or not we are getting the money. Time will tell how this will play out.

Dan Larsen