Steam & Excursion > In The 1950's Lines Of These Were Found On Railroads Big & Small!

While today, when we see lines of parked diesels in the yard of a mainline railroad, this is simply and indication that rail shipments in the Country are down and the demand for motive power has shrunk to the point that storing part of their locomotive fleet makes sense.  Once the economy improves, these mothballed lines of locomotives will go back to work.  Things were different in the 1950's, however.

During the decade of the 1950's it was all too common to come across a line, or lines, of parked steam power on any given railroad.  This meant one of 2 things back then; either the railroad was converting to diesel and no long needed it's steam power, or that the railroad was quitting business altogether.

When the photographer who took this photo visited the Long-Bell Lumber yards at Tennant, California, in the early 1950's he was greeted by this line of parked steam power.  While the railroad had not shut down completely yet, it was getting ready to.  In this line we see Long-Bell 2-6-2's #7, #4 and #8 parked in front of 2-6-6-2 #1001.  There still were a trio of 2-8-2's that were in service at the time, but their days were numbered as Long-Bell was running out of timber in the volume that would justify keeping the logging railroad in operation any longer.

Amazingly, one of the fleet of Long-Bell logging lokies survives to this day.  That is 2-6-2 #4 shown here.  She was found in a scrap yard in South San Francisco by cowboy star Gene Autry who save her from being scrapped and put her on display at his Melody Ranch in Southern California.  Today it is in Merrill, Oregon as part of the Fred Kepner collection.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/20 03:24 by LoggerHogger.

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Martin How many steam Locomotives are in the Kepner collection.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/20 07:33 by czuleget.

I wonder how many logging 2-6-2s were built with an outside bearing trailing truck rather than an inside bearing truck?

We have an airliner "boneyard" at the Mojave Air & Space Port for old airliners and during economic slowdowns.
And Boeing screwups.
It's a good source of revenue for the airport district and supports a couple businesses.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/20 10:18 by MojaveBill.

elueck Wrote:
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> I wonder how many logging 2-6-2s were built with
> an outside bearing trailing truck rather than an
> inside bearing truck?

You should remember that #4 began life as a 2-6-2T for her original owner Weed Lumber Co.

Martin

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   When I was a kid,back in the 1950's, my Dad and a friend of his and I  walked through the deadline of steam at Southern Pacific's Batshore yard.  This sad line contained some of SP's finest steam engines; 4400's 4300's, "Malleys" and other classes of SP steam awaiting their turn with the scrapper.  While there, we encountered another railfan walking past the dead engines.  He was crying like a baby!
   When steam passed many railfans left the hobby forever.  Dad was almost one of them, until he realized the potential of the "growlers," as they were then called.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO.