Bowers Junction, Bendemeer, Merle and Quatama

Highly unusual: the two lines were joined by a connector, which posed challenges at the time. While both lines were standard gauge, they needed to use identical voltages. When OER overhauled its generators, UR upgraded in tandem. When the UR downgraded in the 40s, OER had to forgo it's namesake and dieselify as well (electric rails are cheaper per ton of cargo but more expensive to maintain. Cost-effective electric rail requires high volume).

The connector outlived the original OER line. Burlington Northern abandoned the line west of Quatama in the 70s but the connector stayed active through the 1990s until Southern Pacific, the latest owners, abandoned the whole OER track to make way for the Max. The connector no longer connected to anything and was abandoned with it.

Railroad right-of-ways are surprisingly immutable. It's very hard to do anything with an old ROW so they tend to live on as eternal unusable scars in maps. Most of the connector was repurposed to help widen Cornelius Pass Rd through Hillsboro but a few odd fragments of the old line are still visible in satellite views as suspicious berms. 

For it's ~80 years of existence, the connector rail played a big role in shaping the roads and neighborhoods in the area so I decided to trace the old connector as best as I could visiting the communities along the way. I started at the UR line and made my way south.

Bowers Junction

The route starts from Bower's Junction but there's no parking here. I rode here from Hillsboro, but you could also begin from Beaverton or Bethany.

This marks the track split south around a bend. There's a private road on either side of the berm so Philips Road is as close as I could get to the historic Bowers Junction. It's named after the Bauers, who owned the land when the track was laid. It's unclear why the spelling was changed but it wouldn't be the first time a railroad renamed something to prevent ambiguities between stations (see Davis --> Vadis).

The track crosses Phillips Road at an obvious former bridge. Trees now grow out of the berm. I head south on Helvetia Road and rejoin the connector at Bendemeer.

Bendemeer

Sandwiched between the railroad, the highway, and a power substation, the road loop and first houses appear on maps in the 1950s. Bendemeer is correctly labeled in 1960.

I read once that these were originally built as luxury homes (pejoratively: McMansions), by today's standards, they are a collection of small hobby farms.

Merle and Forest Grove Junction

I head south on Corn-Pass over highway 26. There's no remnants of the rail berm here. The ever-widening highway has consumed the old ROW. There's a delux bike trail here but there's an awkward crossing for me since it only runs on the east side of the street.

This takes me to my next stop: Merle. I don't know a lot about it. Merle is labeled, first, on the 1954 USGS map and remains on modern maps as a Local Community area despite not much happening. 

In the photo above of modern Merle, there's an industrial park beyond the beauty barrier, but not anything else. I suspect it was a short-lived rail stop added to support a single customer in the 1950s but I haven't seen any records to confirm that.

Continuing south, I pass Forest Grove junction. It used to appear on maps as the intersection of Cornell (now Walbridge) and Corn Pass but it's disappeared. Today it's the Synopsys campus:

...and it's also the home of my favorite local bike shop: Rock Creek Cyclery. When my shifter cable frayed and broke mid-ride, they were the only crew with a new one on hand to get me back on the road. When my tubeless tire got a puncture, they helped me reinflate for free. They are the only mechanics I trust to perform a brake bleed on my hydraulics.

Quatama

The OER connector ends just west of Quatama where it merges with the TriMet light rail. A couple of odd street shapes and access roads follow the contours of the old junction (railroad rights-of-way truly are eternal).

Quatama was originally a stop on the old OER but when the light rail was built, the new station retained the name. Oregon Geographic Place Names says it's named after a coast tribe. I couldn't find any outside source confirming that but Lewis McArthur is usually reliable.