The wanderlust that began on the fringes of society with the 1950’s Beat Generation, was well on its way to becoming part of mainstream American culture as the 1960s drew to a close. The Volkswagen Bus, the vehicular symbol of hippie-culture was being joined on the road with ever-larger Airstreams and Winnebagos, capable of carrying the whole family and all the amenities of home.
The Dalles Lock & Dam, constructed the previous decade by the Army Corps of Engineers, was a popular destination for these summer-nomads, who could drive down to the dam’s powerhouse to park their rolling homes-away-from-home.
Roger Person, who started working at the dam in 1968, recounted, “It got crowded with the bigger trailers and RVs (recreational vehicles) that people were driving. There just wasn’t enough room for the cars, trailers and our equipment.”
The solution to the overcrowding came in the form of Les Dalles Portage Railroad, later known as The Dalles Dam Tour Train, which began operating July 20, 1973. It ferried tourists down to the dam from a patch of dirt that would eventually become The Dalles Dam Visitor Center at Seufert Park.
The railroad, created on a tight budget, was made possible by the reuse of existing tracks, donated equipment and volunteer labor.
The tracks that made up Les Dalles Portage Railroad have a long and complicated history. Upriver from the dam, was an 8-mile stretch of treacherous rapids starting at Celilo Falls, which was impassable for riverboats carrying goods on the Columbia River. A portage railroad was built in 1862 to transfer goods between riverboats on opposite sides of the rapids. The 14-mile rail line changed ownership multiple times, ultimately becoming one of the oldest lines of the Union Pacific Railroad.
The line was no longer needed when the Celilo Canal, completed in 1915, made it possible for boats to navigate past the rapids. But the tracks found a second life in the 1950s, when their path was modified to transport the materials and equipment needed to build the lock and dam. The line served its third and final life as the Dalles Dam Tour Train railroad.
The first version of the train consisted of a 25-ton General Electric locomotive and passenger car painted in matching green and yellow livery. The locomotive was a donation from the U.S. Naval Station in China Lake, California. “The tour car was originally a flat trailer used to haul stuff down to the dam for construction. It was left there unused when the construction ended at the dam. We rebuilt it from the ground up to carry people.” Person says.
The “we” Person mentions, includes high school and college students who volunteered to not only rebuild the tour car, but also the track it rode on. The students replaced 700 railroad ties, under the direction of Ken Spagle, a retired engineer. Once the train was up-and-running, student volunteers also served as the train’s first tour guides.
The green and yellow paint scheme only lasted three years, but it has been forever etched into the memory of Mark Ulrich, who rode the train for the first time in 1975 as a first-grader. It left such a lasting impression on Ulrich that he has a website and facebook page dedicated to remembering the train. “I tried to visit it every year. It meant a lot to me and to people I’ve met from around the world,” Ulrich says.
For the 1976 season, the train rolled out wearing a new red, white and blue paint scheme in celebration of the United States Bicentennial. A caboose, purchased from UPRR for $1, was added later. Originally built in 1912, it arrived at The Dalles Dam with boarded up windows and plywood patches covering rotted wood. “We rebuilt the caboose from the ground up at the dam and hired a wood mill in Hood River to mill wood pieces that matched the original pieces on the inside,” Person says.
The train ran for more than a decade in this configuration, but the dinky 25-ton locomotive had a number of issues. According to Dick Samuels, who maintained the locomotive in the very beginning, the cabin was cramped with a mechanical valve that occupied the same space that the engineer’s knees wanted to be. Person explains the bigger issue they had, “That small locomotive was really hard to handle. The train brakes were really touchy, causing the train to jerk around when stopping. It could cause someone to fall.”
In the late 1980s, Person had worked his way up into a supervisory position and started looking for a better locomotive to replace the 25-tonner. He found one at the Marine base in Barstow, California. “It had been completely rebuilt in ‘86, but the Marines weren’t using it because it wasn’t big enough to move their Abrams tanks,” Person goes on to explain, “The new train was so smooth, the tourists couldn’t even notice when you were moving or stopping.”
This was the final configuration of The Dalles Dam Tour Train that ran for almost two decades: 44-ton locomotive, passenger car and caboose, all matching in U.S. Bicentennial red, white and blue. Newly-arrived tourists boarded the train at Seufert Park every half hour from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the summer season.
Even though it’s been over a decade since Ulrich rode the train he remembers the route, “The first stop was Patterson Park where the duck pond was. Then of course you stopped at the powerhouse and they gave a tour of the generators and fish ladder. Then you’d get back on to Westrick Park, which was the last stop, where you could picnic. People could hop off wherever and get back on when the train came back. It would travel backwards when it came back (from Westrick Park).”
The end of the line for the train came in 2005. Person was piloting the train for a small wedding party when the back end of the passenger car came off the tracks. The train was travelling slowly, so no one was injured. “There was an investigation and it was determined the dam couldn’t risk the liability,” Person says.
Person and Ulrich have many fond memories from the 32 years that the train operated. Ulrich remembers, “What was really cool, whenever they crossed the midpoint between Oregon and Washington, they’d pop the horn and say, ‘Now entering the great state of Washington’ and the tour guide would tell you all about Washington.”
Person echoes Ulrich’s sentiment about the tour guides, “The train itself was part of the draw that got people to visit the dam. It was memorable for the tourists because they got to learn about the dam, the river and the local history, because we had excellent tour guides.”
In 2009, the 44-ton locomotive and passenger car were hauled away and the caboose was put on display in Patterson Park, where it can be seen today.