Canby Depot Museum

The railroad depot in Canby, Oregon, was originally built in 1873 by the Oregon & California Railroad and was originally located at North First and Grant Streets. It is the oldest railroad depot in Oregon. The railroad was taken over by the Southern Pacific in 1887.

Additions were made to the depot in 1891 and 1907. The depot closed on August 4, 1976, and in 1978 the Southern Pacific Railroad offered the building to the people of Canby with the provision that it be moved off railroad property.

The building was moved to its current location on August 4, 1983, and the 1907 addition was removed so its materials could be used to restore the rest of the building.

The Canby Depot Museum opened on October 6, 1984. It is home to the Canby Historical Society.

Several other railroad artifacts are here as well including signals, a speeder shed and a caboose.

This caboose at the Canby Depot Museum was originally Union Pacific #25584.

This is one of 100 class CA-8 cabooses that were built for the Union Pacific by the International Car Company of Kenton, Ohio. 

Union Pacific caboose #25584 was built in November 1964. 

It was retired from service by Union Pacific on April 4, 1988.

 
The Canby Depot Museum acquired this caboose in August 1989.

Though it is a former Union Pacific caboose, it has been repainted in the colors worn by Southern Pacific cabooses, and wears the Southern Pacific's "Sunset" herald.

The interior of the caboose is largely intact, though much of the space is now occupied by display cases for museum artifacts.

The museum was not open when I stopped by late in the afternoon on May 11, 2007, so I wasn't able to go inside the caboose or get a good look at the museum displays.

I was only able to look in the windows from the platforms at each end.

While there are no traces of the caboose's original identity on the exterior, its original number can still be seen on the inside.

Southern Pacific adopted this standard design of concrete telephone booth in June 1922. These phone booths were built by the railroad and weighed about 3,000 pounds. They contained a telephone that connected directly to a railroad dispatcher, allowing train crews, track workers, and signal maintainers a way to communicate before radios became available and made these booths obsolete in the early 1980s.
 

Another railroad structure at the Canby Depot Museum is this shed, which was originally used to house a handcar or "speeder" motorcar for use by track maintenance of way personnel.

The "Magnetic Flagman "Wig-Wag" crossing signal was a common grade crossing signal before the modern crossbuck became a standard and flashing lights and gates were mandated. It takes its name from the movement it makes; the black and white banner with the red light in the middle swings, or "wig-wags" back and forth simulating that a human flagman would make with a flag or lantern to stop traffic. The signal also features a bell. 

This type of signal was manufactured by the Magnetic Signal Company of Los Angeles, California from 1910 to 1949. There were several versions of wig-wag made; this is a Model 3 lower-quadrant signal, which was the most common in Oregon and was widely used by the Southern Pacific Railroad. 

There were a number of these signals remaining in service into the 2000s, but in 2006, after receiving federal funding, the State of Oregon announced plans to replace the remaining wig-wags on freight lines, and by 2008 most if not all had been removed, leaving only two (now one) on the Willamette Shore Trolley line plus those on static display or in museums like this one.

Assorted museum artifacts were scattered on the platform of the depot.

Another railroad artifact at the Canby Depot Museum is this switch stand.

This lower-quadrant semaphore signal was built by The Union Switch & Signal Company of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Union Switch & Signal was founded by George Westinghouse in 1881 and survived under that name until being renamed Anasldo STS - USA in January 2009.

South Santiam River Bridge in Lebanon, Oregon

In 1910, the Southern Pacific Railroad built this bridge across the South Santiam River to bypass a section of railroad leading to Woodburn that was washed out by flooding in 1907.

The line to Woodburn also crossed a line leading from Albany to Detroit and Idanha, and future abandonments resulted in this line going from Lebanon to Idanha.

This line would be cut back to Gates, just past Mill City, with the completion of the Detroit Dam in 1952.

Except for the ravages of time, this bridge remains basically as it was when it was built in 1910.

The west approach consists of a long wooden trestle needed to reach the height of the main spans.

The trestle intersects the access road to the boat launch at Gill’s Landing, and the railroad crosses over the road on a short deck girder span that may have been added later.

The main crossing of the river is made by two identical seven-panel modified Warren through truss bridges which are at the same elevation as the eastern shore, meeting at a concrete pier at midstream.

In March of 1993, the Willamette Valley Railway leased the line from Albany to Mill City from the Southern Pacific.

The railroad has operated as the Albany & Eastern Railroad since 2000.

Abandoned Crossing Signal in Salem

On Lancaster Drive SE in Salem, Oregon, a railroad crossing signal stood where there was no trace of a railroad.

The Southern Pacific Railroad once had a branch line between Salem and Geer. This line crossed Lancaster Drive at this point.

The Willamette Valley Railroad leased the Geer Branch from 1993 until its final abandonment in 1995. During that time, sections of the line were abandoned and the tracks removed, starting at the junction in Salem and working east.

Aerial photos suggest that the tracks were removed from this crossing by May, 1994, but the signals were left in place.

The signal on the other side of the street was gone by the year 2000, but this one remained.

Aside from this signal and a little bit of white paint from the stop lines on the pavement, there is little evidence a railroad was ever here.

Looking to the east, the former railroad grade is now under the parking lot of a Budweiser distributor.

To the west is the fenced-in parking lot of a used car dealership.

The signal was manufactured by the Griswold Signal Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Directly in front of the railroad crossing signal was another signal, with a single signal light and a lighted sign. I don’t know the purpose of this signal.

These signals stood until 2007.

WRIX GP9 #3186 at Kalama, Washington, on April 22, 2006

On April 22, 2006, I photographed this former Southern Pacific GP9 at the Kalama Export Company grain elevator at the north end of Kalama, Washington.

This 1,750-horsepower GP9 was built by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors as Southern Pacific #5603 and was placed in service on June 27, 1954.

It was the last of a group of four GP9s numbered #5600-5603 that were built for secondary passenger service and featured steam generators, dual-station cab controls, plow pilots, large signal lights at each end, dynamic brakes, and fuel and water capacity of 800 gallons each. Originally equipped with 61:16 gearing, it was regeared to 60:17 between June 1960 and July 1961, and at some point the dynamic brakes were disconnected.

It was renumbered to #3003 as part of Southern Pacific’s systemwide renumbering of 1965. As Southern Pacific’s secondary passenger trains were discontinued, it was reassigned to San Francisco-San Jose commute service.

On February 26, 1975, it was upgraded at Southern Pacific’s Sacramento Shops to GP9E #3186, the first of Southern Pacific’s passenger GP9s to be upgraded. As part of the upgrading, the dual-station cab controls and dynamic braking were removed.

It remained in San Francisco-San Jose commute duties until Caltrain’s F40PH-2 locomotives were delivered in 1985, and then joined Southern Pacific’s many more common GP9s in freight service. It was retired on September 18, 1995, and sold to Progress Rail in Exeter, California, on January 31, 1996. It wound up as Nevada Industrial Switching Services #3186 at Apex, Nevada. In January 2000 it was sold to Joseph Transportation, Inc.

It ended up as Western Rail Incorporated (WRIX) #3186 and came to the Kalama Export Company in 2006. Still looking largely as it did in its final days with the Southern Pacific a decade earlier, it would soon be rebuilt with a chopped short hood and repainted.