To read Part 1, click here Portland is a massive, and often beautiful city, filled with hidden glens and parks and neighborhoods of all styles and eras. And like its  home city, Trimet—our transit system—has its own nooks and crannies.  One of t h ese is Line 291, the “Orange Night Bus”, which follows the Orange Line MAX train from downtown Portland to Milwaukie, almost 7 miles as the crow flies from where I stood, in Portland’s Old Town district. I had made the decision, for better or worse, that I wanted to ride this bus, and had set out on Monday evening taking an eventful ride on the Orange Line into Portland, hoping to intercept this mysterious bus, and praying that I hadn’t somehow miscalculated something. So far my plan seemed to be working out. I rounded the corner, and found a bus stop just down the street from the Amtrak station. The upcoming arrivals made no mention of the 291, but I thought nothing of it. I had done some research the previous day, and the onl...

T he city was deserted as the night bus crossed through Portland. Streets and MAX train stations sat empty, and towers rose silently into the night sky, as the city lights shimmered on the dark expanse of the Willamette River. It was a journey long in the making, and one that I would not soon forget I’d long been intrigued by the idea of a “night bus”, but only recently had I felt any real motivation to actually ride it. Perhaps I wanted to take that journey for the novelty, to ride a city bus long after most others had returned to the barn. Perhaps I once more drew on my romanticized ideas of passenger trains from days of old. And, less the steam heat and sleeping births, the image wasn’t actually that far off. An Orange Line MAX waits at the Park Street station in Milwaukie, OR on a cold winter  evening, ready for its 11:00pm departure to  Portland Major changes were once more on the horizon for Trimet’s system, and while researching these changes one afternoon, I re-di...