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I love to travel on old railway right of ways (rights of way?). Now, sometimes this means hiking on an actual railroad (link) and sometimes this means traveling on a paved Rails to Trails project (like the Banks to Vernonia Linear Trail). Many times the fact that you are on an old railway can be subtle because the right of way was long abandoned before being reclaimed. A good example of that is the new Urban Red Electric line that is going up in Portland. The marked trail is squirrely because so much has been appropriated by neighbors over the last century and is now "private" land. In other cases, however, the trail is well preserved and you can see how the railroad engineers changed the landscape a century ago to put in the railroad.
There are 2 main aspects that control the physics of railway design.
1) Wheel base width. You need to space your train wheels (side to side) enough to give stability to your load. The closer the wheels are together, the less stabile your load and the more concentrated the load weight is on a small section of ground. However, the spacing of the wheels directly impacts how tight a turn a car can make. The bigger the spacing, the less the turn can be. For standard gauge this forces the turns to be rather gradual.
2) Wheel Friction. There is very little friction between steel wheels and steel rails. This lack of friction is what makes trains run smoothly and at relatively low energy cost. It also directly limits the grade on which an engine can pull a load without having its wheels slip. This means that a train track wants to be relatively level. To do this through hilly terrain, the tracks will snake around a lot, but you will also see where some hills have cuts through them and some valleys were filled with that cut-dirt to create a generally level roadway. (There is a big section of our trail today that goes through such a cut. But I am getting ahead of myself. )
Today my partner and I took advantage of a break in the autumn rain to do a bike ride down the Springwater Corridor Trail. This trail is 21 some miles long with one terminus in Boring and the other in downtown Portland near OMSI. Except for a quarter mile blockage (where you have to take to the city streets) the entire line is old railroad right of way and runs straight and level and paved. A 50 foot wide strip of green that stretches East from downtown following Johnson creek into the nearby forests (now nearby suburbs).
When the trail was originally converted, quite a bit of money was spent as there are nice bike/walk bridges that go over the major roads and canyons that are close to the city. You can zip along on the 2 wide paved trail and be above the traffic and get a nice view of the surrounding city and suburbia.
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| Bridge over 99(?) |
You see things on a bicycle that you might not notice as you speed by driving your car. I had no idea, for instance, that Johnson Creek was so large and so prominent as it winds its way through SE Portland. I sort of thought it was some paved over sort of thing, but, at least during these heavy rains, it is a big and flowing waterway with plenty of trees surrounding it. We crossed the creek a number of times as we headed East.
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| Pendleton Mills |
We saw a couple of Urban things of interest. One was a Pendleton Woolen Mill outlet. This is a old Mill (I don't know if it is still operational) where Pendleton blankets and such were (are?) made. But more important, a store where you might find 'bargains'. I really like Pendleton blankets (though it is true that you only need so many). They are usually a little pricey, however. You can find seconds at these outlets that might be a reasonable price. Especially if you want a University of Oregon Orange Duck blanket with a big blemish!
The right of way gets off the creek for a while as it goes past Tideman-Johnson nature preserve and runs parallel to Johnson Creek blvd. It then comes to a large intersection where the trail crosses diagonally through the intersection. The city has put up a nice (automatic) bike signal here. Just pull up to the green marking on the path such that the "bicycle detected" light turns green and wait for a green bicycle crossing light across the way and off you go!
And right there was paused for a moment to put on gloves (it was a bit nippy) and while we stood, 2 car carriers (one full, one empty) drove past us into this business that sits on the corner. This was a HUGE building and holding yard that seemed to be full of cars. The logo over the entrance had a gavel and I was wondering it if was a impound lot. My partner pointed out that it was probably some sort of auction facility. They turn out to be a place that specializes in getting cars (from individuals? from where is unclear) and doing repair and cleanup and then auctioning them off to car dealers. There is an auction every Wednesday, which you can attend online, but it would be more fun to take advantage of the free breakfast! They talk about having 8 lanes of sales, which I imagine is some car auction talk. I wonder if I can attend an auction just to watch and perhaps write about.
Now we come to a somewhat sad part of my story. All along the trail, from the start downtown, to out here on the edge of Gresham, we have been passing various little homeless encampments. The first one we passed today, which was under the Selwood bridge, we a 30 foot long burned scar. But everywhere there are actively in use tents or just abandoned trash heaps. You don't actually see to many people in the campsites, they may be off scrounging for the day. (OK, scrounging seems like a strong word with a lot of deprecating meaning. But I am going to keep it as I believe it is accurate as can be seen by the items that are in these encampments. They are just odds and ends that were "found" and scrounged for camp use). Often the camps are off trail and hidden down in the cane breaks of blackberry. But other times they are overflowing onto the trail. There are fire pits and propane stoves. There are little 2 man pup tents and huge 8 man camping tents. There are now cars or RV (which you often see at camping places in the city) because there is no way to get the vehicles onto the trail. There was at least one place that had a stairway leading down to it and had a few plywood walls and a scanvenged house door.
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| though I didn't take any campsite pictures intentionally, it is hard to avoid completely as they were endemic in the region. |
Many of the little encampments seem to specialize in some little business activity. Here is a place with lots of bicycle parts, wheels and such. He seems to be fixing bikes and making stuff carriers for use on the trail. Here is a guy that is collecting motorcycle parts. Is he fixing up a motorcycle? Perhaps.
And nothing is neat. There is trash everywhere in every encampment. I believe that when it gets too trashy, the inhabitants just move down the trail and leave their trash. Though I did a few people picking up trash and transporting it someplace. And then the big question for me: Human waste. There are no port-a-poties or restrooms out there on the trail. Where do these people poop and shower? Where do they get potable water? Where do they safely store food? This is not a healthy environment. And I did see several encampments with children toys prominent. Sigh.
You may note that I don't have any pictures of these encampments. One reason is that I was on a bicycle and it is a little hard to stop and photograph. But also it just didn't seem right to be taking pictures of these people and their situation. It would not have been appropriate. I may even have been a little scary.
How does society deal with this sort of thing? I believe the problem to be prevalent across America. I believe that everyone would like some solution. Here in Portland they do clean ups and they move people from their encampments, but that just pushes them off to another location. They are trying making some designated locations, but that isn't something that many of these campers are looking for. Clearly a solution is needed and money must be spent or we are going to have our beautiful parks and byways and biking trails destroyed by this behavior. Double Sigh.
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| 405 Trail Intersection |
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| Mt Hood. Nearing Powell Butte |
Ok. We finally get far enough from the city that the camping stops. We get all the way out to Powell Butte. We could have ridden our bikes up the trail from the back entrance to Powell Butte (the old couple on the Max Offroad eBikes certainly did) but we aren't off road riders. So we stopped and had a snack and then turned around and pedaled back. Turns out that we had been going slight uphill and now were coasting back to Portland.
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| Johnson Creek |
I got distracted. I meant to mention the Good parts of this trail. It connects together a number of city and county Parks. It also connects to the 405 trail, which is a multi-use trail that follows under and beside the 405 interstate and connects up the Marine Trail that goes along the Columbia river. This, in turn, travels up to trout dale and would allow a cyclist access to route 30 and the biking trail up the gorge. So a lot of possibilities for full day excursions in the city. My next big challenge: learning how to safely get from my neighborhood down to the Willamette river. Perhaps on the next sunny day.... which may be in April.
