Steam & Excursion > Building the Grade for a Logging Railroad

Ohio Match spent much of 1924 building their Burnt Cabin logging railroad over a serpentine route that crossed three summits to reach the Little North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River in northern Idaho. This photo clearly shows a steam shovel and horse teams pulling scraper carts being the primary means of creating the grade. Looking close behind the team of black horses heading down the hill there is a guy kneeling on the scraper cart trying hard to get it to tip and dump it's load of dirt. The other guy standing by his feet is holding the reigns on the horses. Caterpillar and similar crawler tractors would soon make easy work of this labor intensive process.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Fabulous photo of railroad building!  I have seen precious few photos of such activity.  Most of the building in prior decades largely went unphotographed - unfortunately.

And you wonder why logging ROW looks the way it does? A couple of the "wherizt" log lines that have
been posted over the years look like game trails!

Out

Usually they were built for temporary roadbeds - cut trees and run.

Just think of the effort necessary to keep that shovel in fuel and water.