Here's a great editorial cartoon entitled "One Way Line to Yesterday" from The Oregonian in August 1948 when many of the streetcar lines in Portland were being retired. People were happy to see the ancient streetcars (many over 30 years old) be replaced with modern buses and trolleybuses.

I mean, did they really move this whole substation a mile from its original location east of the US Army reservation in 1913 just for it to end up looking like this? Such an indignity!

Sidenote: I am not a fan of the new blue and white paint job on the old Vancouver substation at the north end of the Interstate Bridge.

Poor "Hollywood" car 4019 had a rough time of it in its short career in Portland. In July 1953, it collided with a logging truck in Milwaukie, causing extensive damage and slightly injuring two. Repaired, it then collided with an automobile in December 1956, injuring the car driver.

On the foggy morning of September 5, 1949, Oregon City cars 1092 and 4000 collided at a passing track near SE Meldrum Avenue; four were injured. "Indiana" car 4000 was totalled and retired – its trucks were transferred to "Broadway" car 813, which became standard-gauge interurban No. 4012.

A cracking photo of a Portland Consolidated Railway Co. "Portland Heights" car, probably from 1905. This was before the line was extended to run up to Council Crest, which can be seen in the distance.

A photo of streetcar track in Vancouver, WA at the intersection of Washington (running up the picture) and Third. The dual-gauge track leading down to the Interstate Bridge can be clearly seen. This was mandated as part a common-user clause, though no standard-gauge cars ever crossed the bridge.

Oh, this is nice! The restoration of the "Busy Corner" building on the corner of SE 41st and Raymond is almost complete. A classic piece of streetcar commercial architecture built in 1911, it served the Woodstock line. visitahc.org/blog/return-...

For those curious, the 150th map was this mid-to-late 1889 map of Vancouver, clearly showing the original horsecar lines of the Columbia Land & Improvement Company. pdx-streetcar-history.notion.site/Map-of-the-C...

Here it is c. 1905, loading people for a trip around town. It was longer than most cars of the day for higher seated passenger capacity, and had four motors instead of the usual two so it could climb up to Council Crest and Willamette Heights more easily.

The Portland City Archives has just digitized this PEPCO trackage map from June 1926, which also shows the routes for the company's snow plow cars (including No. 300, the old "Seeing Portland" observation car). eFiles link: efiles.portlandoregon.gov/record/12014...

Today in "What if?"... this is a map for the proposed Sellwood-Oaks Pioneer Park from March 1958. This would have taken up the entirety of Oaks Bottom and housed displays on Oregon pioneer living as well as a railroad museum with locomotives and Portland streetcars.

The buildings on the corner have been remodeled somewhat (getting rid of the ladder windows on the facade), but it's definitely the same location – even the house in the background is in both photos.

It took me way too long to work out the streetcar corner this old photo shows, but I got there in the end! Anyone want to see if they can name it before I reveal the "now" Street View of it?

A great photo of Car No. 602, a narrow-gauge pay-as-you enter car built by the American Car Co. of St. Louis, entering service in Portland in 1911. The location looks to be on Savier Street outside the PRL&P shops there, with shop men getting their picture taken with the car.

And one more: When the townsite of Sifton, WA was platted in 1910, many of the streets were named after officers of the companies involved with the town or the interurban line that reached it: today's NE 74th St was originally "Alvadore Avenue" after Mr. Welch.

Alvadore Welch is probably the single most influential man when it comes to electric traction in Oregon. Started the Oregon Electric. Held streetcar franchises in Eugene, Albany, Salem, Vancouver (and other WA towns). Started the Portland, Eugene & Eastern (which became the "Red Electrics").

I'll pick the trail up again soon on the other side of I-205: the outer few miles have a lot more that's worthwhile checking out than the middle segment. If you're curious, here's my Strava map for the day:

At the end of the city streetcar line (variously known as the Main Street, Vancouver Heights or the Car Barn line) sits the 1908 car barn – though you'd never recognize it underneath this modern cladding. It was closed for the 4th of July holiday, so I couldn't ask to take a look inside.

Of all the things on the walk, this made the the happiest – a streetcar-sized corner that has outlasted the streetcar that made it by almost exactly 100 years (and still counting!)

A little further up K street on the way to 33rd is this beautiful old farm house, which definitely must have been present in the days that the streetcars rolled by.

Why was the streetcar line routed along 26th street to get up to the heights? There was one destination along the way that the officials of the line wanted to make sure was served, as I explain here:

On the small segment of "old" 26th Street to the west of I-5 that hasn't been absorbed by Fourth Plain Boulevard is this one tiny store front; almost certainly old enough to have seen streetcars pass by and gain business from riders.

Main Street above McLoughlin is probably the best preserved segment of streetcar commercial architecture in the entire greater Portland area – the Uptown Village is just block after block of wonderful old commercial buildings.

The beautiful USA Theater building (1914) on the SW corner of Main and Evergreen has a streetcar connection. The Washington–Oregon Corporation, which ran the streetcars from 1910 to 1915, moved their offices from Portland to the ground floor of the building when it opened.

The Main Street Promise project is working its way up the street and is currently at 9th/Evergreen. There's no visible sign of old streetcar track right now, but I believe it has been preserved in place as an archaeological resource under the new work. Maybe we'll see more as the work progresses!

I visited the site a little while ago and surmised that there were a lot of old ties still in situ, but I wasn't going to tangle with the blackberry to find out more!

So, all the brush and blackberry has been cut back next to the Gresham-Fairview trail north of Division Street, revealing that the ties (but no track) for the old PRL&P Troutdale division are pretty much all still in place. No idea if removal of the ties is planned. 📸 Larry Nealey/Facebook.

Here's another Vancouver, WA streetcar photo – an Orchards–Sifton interurban car crossing the 860-feet-long Burnt Bridge Creek trestle, c. 1923. I believe this is an outbound car on the eastern end of the bridge where Nicholson Road (which follows the old ROW) begins.

Apart from buried track, some streetcar-sized corners and roads and park paths following interurban ROW, very little remains of Vancouver's streetcars. EXCEPT for the 1908 car barn at 33rd/St. Johns Blvd, hiding under the ugly cladding of a car collision center. Here it is on a 1959 aerial photo.