Steam & Excursion > It's Amazing How Many Railfans Found This Remote Locomotive!

Back in the early days of railfanning, there were no computers to help railfans find their hidden steam locomotives.  There nearly no books and only a couple magazines that covered this hobby.  However, despite the lack of such sources for information, the railfans had an uncanny ability to seek out and find some of the most obscure steam lokies.

An example of one of these steam pots that could easily have never been found but amazingly was photographed quite often is this Shay of the Crane Creek Lumber Company of Willow Ranch, California.  How this engine could be found is quite amazing if you think of her location.

Willow Ranch is in the very Northeast corner of California, nearly on the border with Oregon and just south of Lakeview, Oregon.  The Crane Creek Lumber Co. mill is on the Lakeview Branch of the SP that runs from Alturas to Lakeview.  This is a very remote area.

Even if you were to find Willow Ranch, and if you saw there was a sawmill there, you would have to go into the mill grounds and snoop around before you came across this 42-ton Shay built by Lima in 1913.  CCL #1 had originally been built as a coal burner for a logging line in Minnesota but migrated to Willow Ranch in 1928.  It was here at Willow Ranch that #1 was converted to burn oil and where she obtained the huge homemade sunflower stack we see here. (How would you like to have to lift that huge stack-cover in place at the end of each day/)

By 1947 when Doug Richter found her out behind the mill she is not longer in logging service for CCL and has just been sold to a locomotive dealer in Lakeview, Oregon who hopes to find a buyer for her.

Unfortunately, a buyer for old #1 was never found and the next time a railfan stopped by the mill at Willow Ranch, he would only find the slag remnants from the scrappers torch that reduced #1 to pieces for shipment out.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/16 09:09 by LoggerHogger.

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Cool, Martin!  This is the second shot you've shown us all of this little Shay at Willow Ranch.  One small compass correction.  It's in the far northeastern part of California, not northwestern.

Thanks for showing this!  Now how about one of the No. 1 in service!  That's your next challenge!

Lee Hower - Sacramento

Thanks Martin, Lloyd and I found the old mill site when doing a little exploreing but I didn't know that they had their own engine.

Tom

mcfflyer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cool, Martin!  This is the second shot you've
> shown us all of this little Shay at Willow
> Ranch.  One small compass correction.  It's in
> the far northeastern part of California, not
> northwestern.
>
> Thanks for showing this!  Now how about one of
> the No. 1 in service!  That's your next
> challenge!
>
> Lee Hower - Sacramento

Lee, thanks for catching my typo.  I too have long wanted to find a photo of this Shay in service.  I will keep looking.

CCL had a 16.5 mile long logging railroad into the Modoc National Forest that was only used for a few years between 1928 and 1934.  The Shay switched the mill and the interchange with the Lakeview Branch after that until it was retired in the 1940's

Martin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/16 09:37 by LoggerHogger.

Well, Martin, it's easy to make typos at 3:31am when you posted this!  

I've always wondered how many years the locomotive was actually in service at Willow Ranch, especially after the fire in 1928 or 1929 destroyed the mill up Willow Creek before moving everything down to Willow Ranch.  Was this Shay used for log hauling from a loading area up in the Warners, or just switching the mill?   As I mentioned in an earlier post you made of this locomotive, in the Warner Mountain Ranger Station in Cedarville, there is a large 3D map of the Warner Mountains in the Modoc National Forest, and this large map shows the logging line on it.  That 3D map must date from 1930!

See you at Winterail in Corvallis, home of the 2016 winners of the Civil War, the Oregon State University Beavers!

Lee



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/16 09:32 by mcfflyer.

The Oregon coach won't be there!

Out

Martin, do you know her construction number. I'd like to try and figure out which Northern Minnesota logging Railroad purchased her.

Here you go:

http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/searchdataframe.htm

Martin

Never knew there once was an rail operation at Willow Ranch. 

Thanks for the link, Martin.  Good site.

I found C/N No. 7733  (corrected. s/b 2733) was originally Crookston Lumber Co. No. 4 in Minnesota.  A couple pictures in Frank King's Minnesota Logging Railroads show her to have been built as a very handsome engine, before being converted to oil and equipped with that ungainly stack.

Thanks, again.

-John



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/16 07:39 by LarryDoyle.

She is Lima C/N 2733 for those looking for her on the Shay locomotive site.

http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/searchdataframe.htm

Martin