Steam & Excursion > When A Railroad Is Shut Down There Often Are New Opportunities!

While most railfans in the steam era could only visit railroads on their Sundays off, and this meant that many shortline and logging railroads were also taking the day off, this could be a blessing.  This would mean that much of that railroads motive power would not be off somewhere on the line, but would be back home in the yards where they could be photographed.

In the mid-1940's, California railfan Richard Thomas traveled up to Tennant, California with the purpose of photographing the motive power of the Long-Bell Lumber Co. operation.  Unfortunately, when he arrived, much of the power that would normally be parked outside in the yard, was instead all within the 6-stall locomotive shops.  The reason was that the employees of the lumber company had gone out on strike the week before and the management decided to house the motive power until the strike was over.

Not one to give up, Thomas saw this as an opportunity to capture some unique photos of the logging locomotives lined up inside the shops bathed in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the south-facing windows.  The4 result was this fine photo of ALCO 2-8-2's #101, #3296, and #100 that we see here.

Well done, Mr. Thomas.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/20 04:17 by LoggerHogger.

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Thats a neat shot.  thanks.

Yes, that's a classic shot.  Thanks, Martin.

Did the 3296 come from SP?

5511_ Wrote:
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> Did the 3296 come from SP?


#3296 was built fo rthe Minarets & Western as their #104 and was then transfered to the SP to pay of debts to them.  The SP re-lettered her to #3296 before selling her to Long-Bell.

Martin

Fantastic! 

So the loggers were out on strike and this gentleman crossed their picket line to get the pictures?
Brave (or foolish) man. People on strike tend to not be the nicest folks in town.

Cool pic!!

PHall Wrote:
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> So the loggers were out on strike and this
> gentleman crossed their picket line to get the
> pictures?
> Brave (or foolish) man. People on strike tend to
> not be the nicest folks in town.
Still a union member in retirement from the ATSF/BNSF I would hazard a guess that if the local union did have pickets up on a day the logging operation was shut down it is possible that the photographer came up to the picketers with hat in hand and explained that he had just driven a long way to get photos of the locos. It would have been possible that the picketers would not have a problem letting him by to get evidence that they had shut the RR and logging operation down. Steve Rippeteau