Steam & Excursion > Not Only The Big Steam Railroads Had These Impressive Structures!

There a few places on mainline railroads in this Country where you can see trains on more than one level at the same spot, usually where a railroads bridge goes over the track of another rail line.  These are called "over-under" shots when a photographer is lucky enough to catch trains on both levels at the same time.  However, such locations were not reserved for only mainline railroads as we see here.

The forests in Western Oregon sported thousands of miles of logging railroads in the early part of the last century.  Amazingly, among these miles of often temporary logging trackage, there were 3 spots that we have discovered so far where such "over-under" bridge work existed. 

One of these rare spots is show here in the form of Chapman Timber's trestle over it's own logging line in the forests above Scappoose, Oregon.  On the top level is Chapman Timber's Baldwin 2-6-2 #1 lettered for that company's Portland & Southwestern Railroad, while on the lower level is Chapman's 2-truck Shay #3.

If such a location in the Oregon forests looks vaguely familiar to you, it may because one of these 3 locations in the Oregon forests was forever made famous by Buster Keaton in his epic work, "The General".  In his filming he found just such a logging trestle with logging track below it just a few miles outside of Black Rock, Oregon.  It was there he filmed part of his famous movie where the crews on the train on the top level drop railroad ties down on the Buster Keaton train on the lower level.

The 3rd such "over-under" trestle was located on the Cobbs-Mitchell logging railroad out of Valsetz, Oregon.

You could never discount logging railroads as not being every bit as interesting in their engineering as that of mainline railroads.

Martin



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/19 09:51 by LoggerHogger.

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It was  a somewhat amazing time that never will be repeated again due to the changes in logging.   The amount of infrastructure required for railroad logging and what it took to build it could never be done today and make any money doing it.   We are lucky that someone took the time to preserve it on film and writing for the rest of us.  Martin thru his posts has brought us into what it must have been like out in those woods and what the men doing it had to endure doing there jobs.  Steam is gone, trains the same now its replaced by modern equipment that is somewhat safer and more economical to operate. Still not a job for those who want to work 9-5 and never get hurt or worse.

Interesting setup on the rear of #1's tender for backwards running.  The low(er) profile of the tender likely provided pretty good visibilty, too.

Cool pic, Martin.

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

Trestle built from nearby forest products.