Last weekend I took a railfan trip in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. I hiked to the site of the Frazier mudslide that happened January 2008. With great effort I climbed the entire face of the slide and here is a few photographs.
I noticed that here at the bottom of the slide that it was left in a messy condition. It looks like a section of rail and some ties made it all the way to the bottom.
There’s a lot of dried mud in the lower area and down trees around the sides. I’m sure they didn’t affect the stability of the hillside so why bother with them.
As you move up the slid area you begin to see the layers of rock that was added to the hillside. The lower mainline is still visible in the picture.
I would still like to hear some ideas about the lights. All that buried power cable and light are expensive. Would the MOW people flip them on to inspect the hillside? Are they automatic? Maybe the CEO would used them during hunting season. There were a lot of deer up there.
The climb from Oakridge to Cascade Summit is often referred to as the “longest continuous grade” at 1.8 percent. SP’s Western Region Track Profiles show a different story. Granted, they’re scaled about 2.5 miles to the inch, and grades are mostly shown mile by mile, but… it only shows two miles of the nearly 50-mile hill being 1.8 percent. The rest of the hill is shown as ranging from 1.0 to 1.7 (most of it 1.6 to 1.7).
Was the claim of “longest continuous grade” derived from factoring curve resistance into the fluctuating gradients, or does someone here have proper SP or UP track charts for this territory which show that it’s indeed non-stop 1.8 percent?
Oakridge at milepost 580.5, was 43.8 miles away from Cascade Summit at milepost 536.7, connected with a continuous 1.8% grade, but the track charts in my possession don’t indicate whether this included compensation for curves. Regardless, this can’t compare to the 86.5 mile run from Roseville at milepost 106.5 and Summit at milepost 193.0 at an average grade of 2.2% but with a maximum grade of 2.43%. (The “Hill” on the SP refers to the Overland Route over Donner Pass, leastwise for me, and some S.P. caboose lettering too.)
The grade from Oakridge to Cascade Summit is compensated grade. The actual ascending begins at Lookout, about 6 miles east of Oakridge. The real heavy pull begins about 1 miles downgrade from Tunnel 21, above Pryor.
Donner Pass lacks in length due to the downhill section of mainline at Long Ravine.
