Wayside wrote:Portland is a hub for UP.
Arguably, Hinkle Yard is *the* hub for the Union Pacific in the northwest. It is the UP's own hump yard in the Pacific Northwest, and makes up trains in literally every direction - northwest to Seattle (via Portland), west to Portland, south to California (either via the SP through the Willamette Valley or via the UP to Ogden and south), northeast to Spokane and into Canada, and eastward to anywhere else on the continent.
For trains running Seattle-Hinkle, they will do a crew change at one of the sidings in Northeast Portland as trains don't even need to access Albina Yard.
So as for where to trains go, they are either going west to Portland or Seattle, or east to Hinkle and points beyond; some trains such as the potash trains will head up the Washy to Spokane and to Eastport where they interchange with the CP (hence, a lot of Canadian run-through power). The intermodals typically head through Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and beyond. Local trains run between Albina and Hinkle, serving customers in Cascade Locks, Hood River, The Dalles, Arlington, and Boardman. There are also a couple branches such as the Mount Hood Railroad, the Arlington Industrial Lead (think: garbage trains from the Puget Sound region) and the spur to the Boardman Coal Plant. While UP does have trackage rights (and owns a portion of track) on the Oregon Trunk, it currently doesn't use those rights south to Bend; but they can prove useful if the ex-SP Cascade Line is blocked.
