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Before streetcars roll down the road, they have to be tested. That is why Oregon Iron Work/United Streetcar needed to develop its own test track.

The finished project, built on a Superfund site, includes 3,000 linear feet of streetcar track with catenary poles; a 6,400-square-foot maintenance/testing building; water, sewer and stormwater maintenance systems; and a maintenance roadway.

A major challenge for the project team was to construct the track and associated improvements without excavating through a two-foot soil cap placed over the site by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The project engineer, Harper Houf Peterson Righellis, prepared a land-use application and preliminary development plans, and attended meetings with Clackamas County to receive conditions of approval for developing the site. Coordination between the state Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA helped ensure project success.

HHPR only had six months to take the project from preliminary layout to construction ready for the Railvolution conference held in Portland in fall 2011.