My Name is Grahf... the Seeker of Power.

If I could pick a memory most fond out of the four years I went steady with my Sony Playstation, I would have to go with Square's 1998 sci-fi psycho giant robot RPG Xenogears. I played all 30 hours of this game twice: the first in 1999-2000, the second in 2002.

Xenogears is the only game that makes me consider the possibility firing up the ol' Playstation, complete with fire-engine red SD Ultraman stencil. Then I remember better things to do with my spare time. Still… the temptation.... lingers…

Regardless of whether I will ever fire it up again, I think Xenogears was and is (given what I gather to be a recent retro movement in the gaming world in regards to RPGs) a fantastic science fiction RPG.


Fei, Billy, & Bart take on two double-tailed blue coyotes.
The story of Xenogears and the world in which it takes place in ("Ignas") can be described as the unique flavor one might get when by taking substantial, Japanese-seasoned portions of wuxia tradition, Frank Herbert's Dune, television's groundbreaking Neon Genesis Evangelion, and a mishmash of other assorted skiffy tropes and devices, put them in a blender together, and hit frappe.

This all comes at your pretty fast and gets the first act off to an interesting start. Things don't get really interesting, for me, at least, until protagonist Fei is in the Aveh desert and a strange Gear (a giant robot) flys up and lands on top of a natural stone pillar.

The cloaked and masked pilot emerges and stands on the shoulder of the Gear and speaketh...



Okay. This is cool. Some nice operatic music goin' in the background. I'm diggin' it. Then he drops this gem:


Whoa! What does that mean? What's going on here? The very second Xenogears drops this "slayer of god" (a phrase actually used a little later on, if I recall) concept into the soup, it essentially drives the rest of the story to the very end.

The Red Electrics.
(1914-1929)

In 1913 the Portland Eugene & Eastern Railroad electrified the majority of its steam locomotive passenger line, the only major passenger line in the nation to do so. Service out of Portland's Union Depot (today: Union Station) commenced January 17, 1914. The following year PE&E changed its named to Southern Pacific.


A Red Electric.
Red Electrics were built by Pullman, with steel frames and exteriors, giving them a modern-yet-alien industrial look. The inside was trimmed in mahogany, and comfortable seats were upholstered in green. The unique and eye-catching trifecta of circular windows were a safety feature engineered by Southern Pacific, providing more structural protection to the motorman in case of crash. These exclusive-to-the-Northwest quasi-proto-Streamliners ran from Union Depot down 4th street to Jefferson St., where the line split in two.

The Eastside Local continued south on the west bank of the Willamette River, running on tracks used today by the Willamette Shore Trolley, to Lake Oswego.


Eastside Local at Oswego stop.
From Oswego the line curved southwest through Tualatin, Sherwood, and Newberg, until it rejoined its sibling Westside Local in St. Joseph, 3 miles north of McMinnville.


The Eastside Local along the Willamette.
Between Portland & Oswego, directly across from where the Waverly Country Club is today, is Elk Rock. The Eastside Local, already clinging to the edge of the Willamette's steep banks (using, among others, the six hundred eightysix foot long Riverwood Trestle, still standing today), would circumnavigate Elk Rock by use of the Elk Rock trestle (built in 1888), which curved around the west edge of the rock, high above the river.


The old Elk Rock trestle.
The Eastside had to slow to a mere 10mph while traipsing the trestle. Rocks & gravel were shaken lose by the passing trains' vibrations, falling and bouncing off the steel tops of the Red Electrics. With this in mind, Southern Pacific discontinued the trestle by digging a 1,396-foot long tunnel through Elk Rock in 1921.


North entrance to Elk Rock Tunnel.
This tunnel make a soft "S" curve, resulting in absolute darkness at the midpoint.


South entrance to Elk Rock tunnel, on the night of the last run of the Red Electrics.
The Westside Local headed over the immediate southwest hills, cutting a route mirroring today's Barbur Blvd., through Burlingame & Hillsdale en route to Beaverton and on to Hillsboro and Forest Grove. From there it headed south to St. Joseph to re-merge with the Eastside Local.


The Westside Local departing Portland.
In 1917 Southern Pacific electrified the line from St. Joseph down to Corvallis. This expansion brought the total mileage of electrified track to a total of 180 ELECTRIC miles. The line continued to from Corvallis to California un-electrified.

The Red Electrics continued service in this fashion, peaking in 1920, when sixty-four (64) Red Electric trains operated per day. Unfortunately, by this time road conditions in the Pacific Northwest had improved markedly and the automobile was beginning to cut into passenger railway profits, and service on the line began to shrink until October 5, 1929, when the Red Electric passenger line was discontinued.

Southern Pacific continued to use the tracks for frieght until 1984.

Bones of the City.

Torn Up Trolley Tracks
(S.W. 5th & Taylor)

I work downtown & the City's been digging up the street on Taylor starting at 4th and going up to 5th.

An unexpected (but not really surprising) side effect of my obsession with research on Portland's trolley past is I've perused enough old route maps to know where the tracks once were. So when the City began digging at 4th and Taylor and clearly moving thier way to 5th, I knew there was a good chance they'd run into buried tracks at 5th.

Sure enough, a few days later I emerged at 5:00pm to find a pile of rusted, twisted, pieces of steel (and/or iron) resting on the curb.


BONES OF THE CITY!