Railroad
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The remains of a narrow gauge railroad can be seen on the grounds of the hospital, leading into different tunnels and buildings. The tunnels allowed the hospital to move patients between buildings without the public observing and are marked by purple-colored glass prisms embedded in the roads to provide lighting. While it is rumored that the tunnels connected the hospital to the Oregon State Penitentiary and the Oregon State Capitol, these rumors are false. The tunnels only connect different buildings of the State Hospital together. The narrow gauge railroad did extend to the penitentiary but not within a tunnel; remnants of this line still exist as of November 2008. The State Capitol and associated buildings still have a tunnel system to this day (parts of which are publicly accessible) but they have never been connected to the State Hospital.
While the narrow gauge railroad is no longer used, the tunnels are used daily to deliver food, laundry, and other items, and occasionally patients between different buildings. The rails are evident in many places but the flangeways are filled in, leaving only the head of the rail exposed.
Today the preferred method of transport within the tunnels are electric carts and occasionally bicycles. When the railroad was used, cars made of bamboo were pushed to their destinations. Few spurs or sidings were found on the railroad, so cars were simply stopped on the track where it was necessary to load or unload them, and then pushed away. A number of the bamboo railroad cars still exist but have been converted to non-rail cars by removing the railroad wheels and adding casters; several of these cars are earmarked to be used in the future State Hospital museum and are currently in storage in a hospital facilities warehouse.
In addition to the narrow gauge railroad, a standard gauge railroad spur from the Southern Pacific's Geer Branch extended north from the penitentiary to the State Hospital. A portion of the grade of this spur remains along with two short portions of the standard gauge rails embedded in asphalt within and outside of a wood products manufacturing area on the hospital grounds. This spur has been unused for many years and the Geer Branch itself was abandoned in the mid-1990s.
Read more about this topic: Oregon State Hospital
Famous quotes containing the word railroad:
“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say—I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
—Harriet Tubman (1821–1913)
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)