A request to build new upper-terrace railing in the likeness of the original wood rails at 106 E. Fourth Street, The Dalles, was approved by t…
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HOOD RIVER (AP) — Authorities say no one was injured when a train carrying 214 people on a holiday-themed ride in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon derailed.
Linda Forsberg spotted a train carrying an estimated 30 windmill “arms,” each in a separate, successive flatbed car, heading east through the Gorge Thursday morning on the Washington side.
Union Pacific Railroad has sued the Wasco County Commission in federal court over its rejection of a proposed expansion of tracks near Mosier.
A coalition of environmental groups on Tuesday reached a tentative agreement with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF), signaling the end of a three-year court tussle over coal pollution.
Union Pacific Railroad’s plan to add roughly four miles of new track near Mosier might not have been controversial several years ago. However, times have changed, primarily due to several derailments involving trains carrying crude oil that exploded and burned and — in one particularly horrific accident in eastern Canada — took the lives of dozens of people.
TWIST-OFF fate: customers at food carts in the Hood River News parking lot have been imbedding beverage caps in the tar seam. There’s now a line of more than a 100, creeping ever eastward.
There’s a new reporter in town. As of this week, D. C. Jesse Burkhardt has stepped in as The Dalles Chronicle’s new government reporter. Burkhardt, a University of Oregon graduate, has more than two decades of experience in community journalism, and his roots in the Columbia River Gorge run deep. From 1994 until 2011, Burkhardt served as editor of The Enterprise, the weekly newspaper in White Salmon, and he has lived in several gorge communities, including The Dalles and Hood River in Oregon and White Salmon and Snowden in Washington.
The Mosier train derailment was caused when an unknown number of large screws, used to provide extra stabilization to rail ties on curves, sheared off — something a railroad official said he’d never seen before in a derailment. Jason Rea, chief engineer for the western region of Union Pacific Railroad, described at a community meeting Friday in Mosier what had caused the June 3 derailment of 16 oil cars.
As a lifelong gorge resident, I’ve seen my share of train derailments, fires and highway accidents over the years. Last week we dodged a bullet when an oil train derailed just west of Mosier on a hot, calm day. Suddenly, the hypothetical accident which our first responders had only recently been trained for became reality. Thankfully, the disaster plans put in place worked, and new requirements in state and federal laws made a difference, too.
