Steam & Excursion > When Production Expanded, The Railroad Had To Expand To Meet It!

One of the unique aspects of the logging railroads used to supply logs to it's parent company was how it was a vital link in the production chain that had to be ready to expand when production was increased.  Let's take a look at how this was accomplished.

In late 1921, the board of directors for the Shevlin-Hixon Company was pleased with the outlook for the lumber market in the next several years and decided it was time to expand the production at their operation located in Bend, Oregon.  The first order of business was to build an additional mill along the Deschutes River right next to the 2 mills that they had been running sine there since 1915 when they started. 

The addition of this new mill would expand production significantly which meant they needed to expand the amount of wood being harvested and delivered to the river log pond significantly as well.  This new demand for logs meant they needed to hire additional loggers for the woods and open up a new log camp in these expanded cutting areas to meet the new mill's added capacity.

However, merely expanding daily log production capacity in the woods and timber production capacity at the mill would not mean greater overall lumber production unless this new volume of wood could get from the woods to the mill.  This meant that the logging railroad component of the Shevlin-Hixon operation in Bend also needed to expand to meet this new production goal.

By 1921, the S-H logging railroad was already operating a capacity.  It had 4 logging locomotives that consisted of two 3-truck Shays and two Baldwin 2-82's.  Besides this motive power the logging railroad had just enough log cars to meet current logging production.  The need to expand production in 1922 by nearly one-third, necessitated a call to Baldwin to order another 70-ton 2-8-2 and a call to Pacific Car & Foundry for another train set of log cars.

By the end of 1922, the new mill had been completed along the banks of the banks of the Deschutes River and was ready for it's first logs.  The new log camp was built in the pine forests southwest of Bend and ready to add to the daily log count being produced by the existing camp being operated by S-H.  The final piece to the expansion plan was the arrival of a new train set of log cars from PC&F's Renton, Washington plant as well as the new 2-8-2 #5 that had arrived from Baldwin's Eddystone Plant.

With the cutting, milling and railroad all expanded, the production totals for 1923 reached impressive numbers, all to the delight of the S-H Board Of Directors.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/19 02:32 by LoggerHogger.

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Martin
Just when I think you have done it all with your posts, you come up with this gem from your collection . .  complete with the mill, the new log car and the engine. 

As my grandson used to say at four years of age  . . . "unbahweevalbe"!

Craig
mcmrailvideos.com

How much of the mill is still in operation...Its been a few years since i was by the plant and it was pretty busy then.???

Barstool Wrote:
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> How much of the mill is still in operation...Its
> been a few years since i was by the plant and it
> was pretty busy then.???

The mill was torn down in 1950 soon after Shevlin-Hixon sold out to Brooks-Scanlon.

Martin

That poor flat car. Do you suppose the engine rode on its deck with those heavy tie downs?   Wondered if they pre- curved the flat so it would ride level with the engine.


Thanks again Martin. You can sure come up with pictures and info.


Nudge

The log car is at the factory and is brand new.  The factory would over-tighten the truss rods to give the car more carrying capacity. 

Martin

I would wager that smile on the board of directors probably vanished within a year. To put Martin’s post in some perspective, the pine lumber markets in the west had been growing in leaps and bounds through the last half of the 1910s and early 1920s. Market demand ran well ahead of supplies, resulting in escalating prices through that time period. Shevlin-Hixon was one of many operations in the pine region that embarked on either expanding existing operations or building entirely new mills. Unfortunately for everyone involved, market demand peaked and started subsiding right as all this new production capacity came on line, and the demand and supply lines crossed somewhere in very late 1923 or early 1924. This quickly resulted in a glutted market and crashing prices throughout 1924 and especially in 1925, and the industry as a whole entered a decade of extreme depression that lasted into the middle 1930s. One interesting example of some of this impact is found in Burns, Oregon, where lumberman Fred Herrick was then building a new sawmill in what would later become the City of Hines. Herrick financed all of his new ventures with proceeds from existing operations. The crash in lumber markets dried up his construction funds, which forced Herrick to seek the first of several time extensions on the U.S. Forest Service timber sale that he won. It’s interesting to go through reporting from that time, each delay in the contract was met with howls of protest from the local citizens but satisfaction from industry press in as much as it meant that much more time before another large mill entered an already crowded marketplace. Similarly, a lot of the pine industry press and leaders did all they could do to discourage Weyerhaeuser from building its mammoth mill in Klamath Falls right at the end of the 1920s, with efforts aimed at trying to convince the company to either not build the mill at all or at least buy up some existing mills, but the company persisted in building its mill, which when it opened had a production capacity equal to the combined output of the next four largest mills in the Klamath Basin.

Given some historical perspective this seems to fall into one of those corporate decisions that was based on very solid information and analysis at the time, but the underlying assumptions did not hold up.

Thanks for the post!

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone

Is there anything prettier than a Baldwin 70-ton Logging Mike?
 

Earlk Wrote:
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> Is there anything prettier than a Baldwin 70-ton
> Logging Mike?
>  

Not hardley.

Martin

Fully agreed...I’ve always liked the looks of all of the logging mikes.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Posted from iPhone