Washington Park and Zoo Railway

Washington Park & Zoo Railway
The Zooliner, shown arriving at Washington Park station, is one of the railway's two primary trains.
Overview
Locale	Portland, Oregon
Ridership	Approx. 350,000 annually
Operation
Opened	June 7, 1958 (1958-06-07)
Owner	Metro (Oregon regional government)
Technical
Track gauge	2 ft 6 in (762 mm)
Route map

The Washington Park & Zoo Railway (WP&Z) is a 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge recreational railroad in Portland, Oregon's Washington Park with rolling stock built to 5/8 scale. Opened in three stages in 1958, 1959 and 1960, it provides transportation between the Oregon Zoo, Hoyt Arboretum, International Rose Test Garden, and the World Forestry Center. The extended line is about 2 miles (3.2 km) long. There is also a 1-mile (1.6 km) loop within the zoo grounds. The railway carries about 350,000 passengers per year.

The railroad is operational year-round (except in January and part of February, when it is closed for required maintenance), but the extended line is used only on weekends in the spring and daily only in summer months. Special events occur during the Christmas holidays. As of 2012, the price of a ticket was up to $5.00 for the full line, $3.50 for the short "Zoo Loop", but zoo admission was also required.

Zoo officials announced in September 2013 that the line would be closed for about one year for construction, with the last day of service scheduled to be September 22. The temporary closure was necessitated by the construction of the zoo's new Elephant Lands exhibit, which will also include remodeling of other parts of the zoo grounds. The short-loop route through the southwest part of the zoo grounds was scheduled to be removed permanently, and during the one-year suspension of service a new section of track was to be laid to create a replacement for the short loop. Train operations returned running on the new Zoo Loop line as of November 22, 2014.

Originally named the Portland Zoo Railway, the 1.2-mile (1.9 km) first section of track opened on June 7, 1958, more than a year before the zoo opened fully at the same site. This service used the Zooliner trainset, the railway's first and only train at that time, and operated daily except Mondays through the summer. Meanwhile, the zoo's new West Hills site was only open on weekends, because it was still under construction, and even by August penguins and bears were the only animals moved from the old zoo, which remained in operation. The initial train service around the yet-unfinished new zoo grounds was suspended in mid-September 1958, not to resume until the zoo's opening in July 1959. A fundraising campaign was launched, to raise money to build an extension – outside the zoo grounds – through the woods of Washington Park and also to build a steam locomotive. It was decided to model the planned steam engine on a real one, a Baldwin 4-4-0 type, and construction began in the autumn, with plans to use it initially at the Oregon Centennial Exposition, scheduled to be held the following summer in North Portland (at the site of what is now the Portland Expo Center). The steam engine was named "Oregon", or alternatively "the Oregon".