Astoria Welcomes You!

May 14, 2010

I love the look of this place - it's about as funky as it gets, but it won't last long without a lot of TLC. At first I thought this was the platform for the train station (the brown building on the right) - and maybe it was a very long time ago, but after that it was a feed and grain storage building. I thought it looked like a station platform, so my first version of this post was about trains. Here's what I wanted to say:
An excursion train ran again for a short while a few years ago, and then it stopped. But a several-year-long project will put an historic steam engine on the line in 2011 that will run along the river through Astoria and beyond to . . . I'm not sure if the end point has been determined yet. I heard about it on KMUN the other day, and when I get a chance I'm going to check out the quonset hut at the west end of town where the work is being done. The project welcomes the public's attention and donations. Here is their web site. Won't it be fun to see the old engine chugging down our rails? I'm up for a ride, are you? I took this photo from the River Walk.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Oregon Electric Railway Co., 1903-1945

There are treasures everywhere you look, and this one sits by the side of Marine Drive, unattached to a museum or institution of any kind. It's one of the hardest things I've photographed so far for the Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo blog, only because you can't get to some of the angles, and because of the rotting bamboo fence around it. I would like to have shown the wheels, and I would like to have shown the lettering on the side more clearly. It says, "Oregon Electric Railway Co." and "1903 - 1945." It's been preserved with a brand new coat of paint. This was the best single photo I could come up with.

This caboose may have nothing to do with Astoria's history, but may have been acquired by local railroading enthusiasts.

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