Steam & Excursion > The Goal Of This Railroad Culminated At This Same Spot Every Day!

While most railroads in this country spend a majority of their time picking up shipments in interchange from other railroads and transferring them in interchange to others there once were railroads that picked up their single freight  commodity from it's point of origin and delivered it on their same railroad to the point of manufacturer.  That was the job of the logging railroad.

As we see in this fine photo by Jim Wren, West Side Lumber Shay #10 has arrived at the log pond at the mill in Tuolumne, California with another load of cut logs from the company's timber holdings.  This train started high in the woods above Tuolumne at the landing where the freshly cut log was delivered from the stump to the rail head by off-road log truck.  It was the single task for the West Side's logging railroad to deliver that log to this log pond at the company's mill.

Once the logs were rolled off the skeleton log car and splashed into the water of the pond formed by the damming of Turnback Creek, that job of the railroad was complete.  It had met it's one goal for the day, the delivery of logs to the mill so that the mill could turn the log into marketable timber produts.  From there, the wood would be loaded into standard gauge freight cars and turned over to the Sierra Railroad to start it's trip across country through a series of interchanges with other railroads as was the common job for those railroads.

For the West Side Lumber logging railroad, however, it had only on job, take the logs from the stump to the log pond.  At that point it had met is one goal.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/19 06:04 by LoggerHogger.

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Awesome photo.
​I see two men standing on logs or some kind of float in the pond.  That must have been hard and unpleasant work.  I assume they were not down there when it was time to unload the logs.

Interesting tower thing in the background that appered to be on railroad wheels.

Nice picture.

Jim Evans

FiveChime Wrote:
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> Interesting tower thing in the background that
> appered to be on railroad wheels.
>
> Nice picture.
>
> Jim Evans

Jim, That "tower thing" is a lumber stacker.  You can see how it carries the cut lumber up and over the top and down the other side where it would be unloaded on to the lumber stack in the drying yards that were located on the other side of the log pond.

Here is a photo of the lumber drying yards where the stacker was used.  As you can see it is across the bridge from the enginehouse and brow log.

Martin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/19 07:25 by LoggerHogger.

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