It’s the end of the line for TriMet’s oldest MAX trains. On Saturday, April 18, transit fans came to Holladay Park to bid farewell to one of Portland’s oldest forms of public transportation. Attendees got a chance to see a Type 1 car one last time, take pictures, see inside the cab, and write farewell messages on the side and interior of the train.
The MAX Type 1 train cars were based on a Belgian design and manufactured by Canadian company Bombardier Transportation, and debuted in September 1986, when Portland’s light rail system first opened. They weren’t meant to make it this long.
“They were supposed to last 30 years,” says Tyler Graf, a public information officer at TriMet. “Thanks to our outstanding maintenance team, we’ve been able to keep them on the system for 10 extra years.”
However, servicing technology from the 1980s has gotten more difficult and costly. “We can no longer source the replacement parts for these vehicles,” says Graf, “and haven’t for quite a while. Any time we needed a replacement part it had to be fashioned in-house.”
Graf estimates that the Type 1 trains have rolled for approximately two million miles over the course of their nearly 40-year life.
One of the biggest issues with the Type 1 trains has nothing to do with technological issues, but with accessibility. In 1986, the only light rail cars on the market required riders to climb stairs in order to get to their seats. MAX stations had lift devices for riders with wheelchairs or other mobility devices, but they could be unreliable or time-consuming.
After the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, TriMet started exploring low-floor cars, many of which were already in use at the time by European transit systems. This led to an order of 46 new low-floor cars that let riders with mobility devices get on and off much faster. It also meant that the old Type 1 trains almost always had to be coupled with a newer train for accessibility purposes.
According to Graf, recycling the Type 1 trains will take a while. Decommissioning the cars involves draining the fluids at TriMet’s Ruby Junction facility. After that, the Type 1 trains are bound for Radius Recycling where they’ll be broken down and turned into building material.
According to Graf, recycling a train car is somewhat more involved than recycling a beer can.
“It’s a delicate dance we need to do,” he says. “These vehicles are so big and overweight that we need special permits and a special vehicle to transport them. We were only doing one a month for a while.”
Not all of the Type 1 trains are bound for the recycling plant, though. One will live on at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum in Brooks, where it will run on a short track.
As part of Saturday’s festivities at Holladay Park, onlookers were given markers and invited to write on the train. By the end of the event, the car was covered with messages, signatures, small cartoons, and reminiscences of rides past. Many said things like “Thanks for the Rides + Good times!”
One seat had “PLACE BUTT HERE” scrawled on it, which is a good reminder of how chairs work. A message in green marker on the train read, “THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION—SEATTLE.” (Whether or not Seattle copied Portland’s homework while planning mass transit could not be confirmed by press time.) Meanwhile, a tag on the stairs read “IDEAL SEAT AT ALL TIMES”—a joke referencing signage on Type 1 MAX trains about how sitting on the stairs was not allowed.
Another message scrawled on the Type 1 car read simply: “The doors are closing, train departing, please hold on. Thanks, MAX.”
