America’s Weirdest Train: WES Commuter Rail in Portland

[Applause] [Music] hi everyone it's me tom welcome to a brand new trains are awesome video it's safe to say the subject of this video has been on my train bucket list for a very long time we're in portland and the motto of portland is keep portland weird i think nothing about portland is weirder than its commuter rail system so let's go check it out so this is the beaverton transit center a through station on the blue line the terminus of the red line and home to about a billion geese beaverton transit center is where we will be transferring from max light rail to west commuter rail today if you love train travel hit that subscribe button we upload at least once a week and this way you won't miss any of our content you can also join our community on patreon your support gives you access to cool features such as early video releases and finally follow us on our social media instagram and tick tock [Music] so to get to west commuter rail you walk through the bus station underneath this little shelter and then that elevated platform is where the train leaves so there's some public art on the platform here your hot pass is valid it's a little after nine in the morning and i've made it to beaverton transit center just in time to catch the last train of the morning if i had missed this one i would have had to wait till about three in the afternoon i will tell you more about the system in a little bit but as the train rolls into view maybe you can already understand a little bit why i call this system weird [Music] [Music] [Music] look at this it's a single card diesel train where else in the states are you gonna ride this plus the design is something like i've never seen before first of all the front end and the back end have different designs but i'm so excited to ride this i've been wanting to do this for a really long time time to board west commuter rail by the way the west in west commuter rail stands for west side express service it is a rush hour commuter rail service between beaverton oregon and wilsonville oregon this is what the interior of our colorado rail car train looks like voltage power as you can see the cars provide plenty of space for bicycles and wheelchairs i don't remember if the wi-fi worked i think i forgot to check and they provide facebook another thing you'll notice is despite this being a commuter train the roads are only two by two with a very wide aisle ada compliant so people with the wheelchair can go through i think the level step is also a great improvement for most american commuter rails interior that is the advantage of a single deck single car train is you can create it to be transparent like this so you can see the whole train let's go try out these seats i was very impressed with the padding and the comfortability of the seats although they do remind me a little bit of the seats you'd find on a long distance coach oh and as if these seats weren't comfy enough watch what happens when i there's a little bit of a recline yes i could already tell that this was going to be a comfortable 17-minute ride to tualton oregon now west commuter rail extends all the way to wilsonville but because this was the last train of the morning leaving beaverton transit center at 908 i had to catch a bus back to beaverton and tualton was a better option to take a bus than wilsonville for the very first section of the route the train actually runs in the middle of the street the tracks that we are currently running on belong to the portland and western railroad in fact the crew of our train is also pnw railroad staff the portland and western railroad owns several tracks throughout the state of oregon and they have an agreement with trimet that they will not run freight trains during the hours of passenger train operation so during the morning and the evening rush while on board i actually saw several of these freight trains waiting for our train to pass most of them were carrying lumber now let's talk a little bit more about west commuter rail west is a 14 mile long line in the western suburbs of portland with five stations the line opened in february 2009 a year behind schedule because these colorado rail card diesel sets had some issues entering service these trains themselves are unique being the very last diesel multiple units that colorado rail car builds before ceasing to exist as a company riding a diesel multiple unit in the united states is rare anyways the only other examples that come to mind are text rail the sprinter in oceanside california and the new aero trains in san bernardino california another system that comes to mind are these smart trains just north of san francisco but all the examples i named above still look very different from these colorado railcar trains on west commuter rail americans just like their trains locomotive hauled there are currently four of these colorado rail car trains operating on the west commuter rail network three of them are motorized and one acts as a non-powered control unit doors to my left what does that mean that is my stop already and i'm sad because i like these trains while they're certainly rare they're not entirely unique in the united states both the alaska railroad and tri-rail in southern florida run or ran these cars now before we leave let's talk about ridership on west commuter rail because it is such a short system it is depressingly low the daily average ridership on west commuter rail is 400 people to put that into perspective trimet's max light rail in portland carries almost 51 000 people a day and the l in chicago carries 900 000 people a day so here the railroad crossings make the horn noise instead of the train [Music] [Music] it's a railroad crossing so i knew these types of railroad crossings existed in the states but i'd never actually seen one before also look at this next feature you'll notice here that immediately south of the station is a switch but it doesn't become double track here instead what we have are gauntlet tracks these are two tracks interlaced with each other that allow some trains to pass the station farther from the platform than other trains the inner tracks are used by west trains whereas the outer tracks are used by freight trains so that they don't bump into the side of the platform that was just another cool bonus on top of my already awesome west commuter rail experience what i loved about this service was the comfort of the trains also just the design of the trains like this really is the only place where you can ride one of those oh that's my bus oh well runs every 15 minutes appreciated the staff uh they were very professional and every passenger they asked like where they going and then some people fell asleep and they like helped them get to their destination and was overall just a very pleasant experience some things i'd improve about wes commuter rail might be the frequency i wish it ran all day um man i really love that retro interior and those seats were incredible this was worth coming to portland for just this anyways i hope you enjoyed the video uh wes commuter rail does not run in the midday so this was the last train so i'm gonna have to take the bus back to portland um thanks for watching today please subscribe to trains are awesome because we have so many more cool trip reports like this one coming up and you're not going to want to miss that so i'll see you next time [Music] made it back to beaverton transit center man those seats were hard but i guess i'm just uh spoiled by west commuter rail those seats were amazing [Music] you

Channel: Trains Are Awesome

Views: 17,489

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Id: RWPes0X4sr4

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022