Photo by Cliff West
To commemorate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Oregon Department of Transportation operated an excursion train along the south bank of the lower Columbia River from Linnton, near Portland, to Astoria, near the site of Fort Clatsop, where the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered over in 1805-06.
These first two pictures show the train passing the farm between Deer Island and Tide Creek.
These next two pictures show the train passing through Goble.
Note that there are only two cars on the train. The train normally ran with three cars, but sometimes only needed two for the number of tickets sold.
Lewis & Clark Explorer #10 & #11 are RDC-1s that were built by Budd in August 1956 for the Pacific Great Eastern as #BC-10 & #BC-11. The Pacific Great Eastern became the British Columbia Railway on April 1, 1972, when it was taken over by British Columbia’s provincial government. The railroad began going by the name BC Rail on June 19, 1984. The cars were purchased by the state of Oregon’s Department of Transportation from the British Columbia Railway, which had ended its passenger service in 2002.
The train ran for the summers of 2003 to 2005, making one round trip on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.
