PORTLAND, Ore. — A group of advocates held an event Thursday to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Washington Park and Zoo Railway, and to renew calls for a return of the iconic miniature train's longer route through the park.
The original route included two segments: a loop around most of the Oregon Zoo campus and a 1.4-mile line branching off from the loop that wound through Washington Park to reach a second station near the Portland Japanese Garden and International Rose Test Garden.
"The train started out just inside the zoo in 1958. So it actually came before the zoo, and it was a major part of the movement; to have a new zoo and a great train. It was the pride of Portland," said Kathy Goeddel, president of the Friends of the Washington Park and Zoo Railway.
Both segments were closed in 2013 as part of a major bond-funded renovation project at the zoo, which included demolishing a significant portion of the original loop to make room for an expanded elephant habitat.
The project included construction of a replacement zoo campus route that opened a year later, using a small portion of the Washington Park segment and adding a turnaround loop, but the rest of the longer segment remained closed.
"There was a small landslide, and then one of the 1959 curb walls failed, and the zoo decided not to bring back the train to Washington Park," Goeddel said.
The tracks and Washington Park station are still there, but those original problems haven't been fixed and the rest of the route has become overgrown and dilapidated after more than a decade without use.
Since 2018, the nonprofit friends group has been working to try to bring the route back and get the restoration goal included in Portland's and Metro's long-term plans for Washington Park.
A zoo report in 2017 estimated that it would cost around $2 million to make the route operational again. Goeddel said the minimum cost to get it running today would still be less than $3 million, although fully restoring all the historic train cars could push it to near $10 million.
Taking inspiration from the community and business fundraising campaign that paid for the original construction of the train, Goeddel said her group has been talking to private foundations and pursuing rail grants, as well as lobbying the zoo to put a small percentage of the revenue from May's bond renewal toward the restoration.
"We're trying to preserve those memories for the next generation of Portlanders," she said. "And it's so important now. We've been losing a lot of the things that make Portland and Oregon special, and this is something that we can fix — we know it needs to be done and we can do it. And so we want to bring it back."
