Steam & Excursion > A Long Way From Her Original Owner But Still Performing Well!

There were certain steam locomotive designs that lended themselves to a variety of different railroad applications. We see one of those at work in this photo.

Built by Baldwin in July 1923 this trim 2-6-2 was designed to handle trains for her first owner the Mt. Shasta Power Company on their Pit River Railroad that ran in the pine forests of Northern California off the McCloud River Railroad. She served that line well during the construction work that line was dedicated to perform.

10 years later #4 was sold to the Oakland Terminal railroad where we see her at work in the 1940's. Here she was assigned to shuffle trains of cars about the OT yards and to make up trains for other lines to collect. Again her classic design worked well.

Amazingly this very engine in 1943 caught the attention of the power starved AT&SF who added her to their roster for a brief time as their #2447. Finally in 1944 she was sold to her last owner the Modesto Empire & Traction Co. of Modesto, CA where she served out her last years in shortline service.

Finally in 1952 her booming days were over and she met the scrappers torch. She had proved to be quite a versatile locomotive throughout her years.

Martin



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/18 03:21 by LoggerHogger.

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LoggerHogger Wrote:

> 10 years later #4 was sold to the Oakland Terminal
> railroad where we see her at work in the 1940's.
> Here she was assigned to shuffle trains of cars
> about the OT yards and to make up trains for other
> lines to collect.

More specifically, the engine was bought to switch the transfer sheds at the Port Oakland's Outer Harbor, which were being developed in the early 1930's. That's one of the sheds in the background. The OTRR was the freight-hauling division of transit operator Key System, and had been using electric freight motors to handle the small amount of freight business along the street railway routes in Oakland. The new Outer Harbor trackage wasn't going to be electrified, so the OTRR needed something that burned fuel for its power instead. They leased an underpowered 0-4-0T for about a year and looked into buying a 4-wheel gasoline-powered Whitcomb critter, but #4 turned out to be cheaper and more powerful.

The above photo appears on page 232 of The Key Route, Part Two, credited to L.L. Bonney.

> Amazingly this very engine in 1943 caught the
> attention of the power starved AT&SF who added her
> to their roster for a brief time as their #2447.

The transaction was a lot more complicated than that. In July 1943, Key System sold the Oakland Terminal Railroad to the Western Pacific and the Santa Fe along with trackage rights to reach freight customers on its lines. The #4 was included in the sale. The Western Railway Museum has a copy of the sale agreement listing the 2-6-2 among the assets being transferred.

Santa Fe and WP set up a jointly-owned shortline called the Oakland Terminal Railway to handle the new business, but as far as I know, the #4 was never lettered for OTRy and was probably never used by them. Instead, Santa Fe provided Alco diesels for port switching and other duties for the first few years until OTRy bought its own Baldwin diesel in 1947 (supplemented by Alco S-1's borrowed from sister ATSF/WP shortline Alameda Belt Line and electric freight motors leased from WP subsidiary Sacramento Northern). The July 1943 photo in this old thread shows Santa Fe Alco 2300 leased to the OTRy at Oakland with the #4's tender visible in the background:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,3471368,3471952#3471952

Santa Fe assumed sole ownership of the #4 on August 14, 1943, but I have yet to unearth the details of how and why WP gave up their interest in the engine. In any case, the fact that Santa Fe could afford to sell the 2-6-2 to the M&ET after only a year and right in the middle of WWII to boot (September 29, 1944) certainly suggests they didn't need it to stave off a power shortage.

Very good looking machine. To bad not saved. Both history lessons were very interesting.

Posted from iPhone

I've always enjoyed the lines of the #4.

PG&E built the Mt. Shasta Power Corporation Railroad, aka Pit River Railroad, from a connection with the McCloud River at Bartle south and east to the site of the Pit 1 powerhouse, during the summer of 1921. PG&E relied on locomotives leased from McCloud River during the construction phase of the Pit 1 project, which lasted until 1922. The utility bought the #4 as it shifted its focus to the Pit 3 project, consisting the dam impounding Lake Britton, four miles of aqueduct, and a large powerhouse. PG&E initially built a five mile long branch from Cayton Valley to the Pit 3 dam site, roughly about the time the #4 arrived. After completing Pit 3, the utility extended the railroad again to the Pit 4 dam, but by the time they completed it in 1927 California was getting swamped with electricity, and as a result PG&E did not complete the powerhouse for that dam until 1955.

The Pit River Railroad likely saw very little service after 1927, and somewhere between 1927 and 1929 PG&E moved the #4 and most of its other equipment from the Pit River country down to an equipment yard near Davis, where it languished until sold to Key System/Oakland Terminal in 1934. Maybe coincidentally, that was the same year PG&E finally scrapped out the rails on the Pit River Railroad, though the McCloud River Lumber Company later built log spurs on parts of the grade, and a few short stretches of that went on to become part of the McCloud River Railroad extension to Burney.

I've only seen one photo of the #4 in service on the Pit River, you can find it in my The McCloud River Railroads book (Signature, 2016).

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

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What are the reefers doing there?

timz Wrote:

> What are the reefers doing there?

I don't know specifically what was being shipped, but several other photos exist of refrigerator cars moving on the Oakland Terminal Railroad. This one shows four of them tied to the tender of #4 beside the Key System powerhouse:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3340823,3341584#3341584

It would be interesting to see #4 side-by-side SMV #205.