Steam & Excursion > A Resourceful Way For A Railroad To Move One Of It's Locomotives!

At the end of the steam era there were a fortunately few steam locomotives that found themselves donated to museums an to town parks in the area where they once operated.  The dilemma was always how to get the heavy locomotive actually to the display site since most had no rail access.  Here is how one such move was accomplished.

In the late 1950's Rayonier Inc. had brought Baldwin diesels to take over most of the logging chores on it's Clallam, Washington operation in Northwest Washington State.  The meant the retirement of many of it's geared steam lokies.  One of these retired at that time was Rayonier's big 3-truck Willamette #4 shown here.  The company had decided, rather than scrap the locomotive, they would donate it to the nearby town of Port Angelas for display in a small park in the center of town. 

This would require the locomotive to be loaded on trucks for movement to the rail-isolated display site.  How to load the locomotive on the trucks was discussed with Rayonier's logging superintendent and this is what he came up with.  Once #4 was given a fresh coat of paint for display, she was towed by rail up to the log reload site where heavy log loads were lifted off log trucks onto waiting railroad log cars by use of a huge "Hayrack" boom.  Since there was a truck road already built next to the rail reload site, it was decided that the moving truck would be positioned there and the locomotive would be loaded on to the waiting truck by use of the same Hayrack that loaded log cars.  The tender was loaded separately from the locomotive itself in this process.  In this view we see #4 waiting for the arrival of the moving truck so the loading process can commence.

The move went well, and today #4 is still on display in Port Angelas as a testiment to Rayonier and the logging history of the area.

Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/20 04:07 by LoggerHogger.

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Hi Martin! Did the City of Port Angeles ever get around to cleaning the poor gal up a bit while on display uptown? The last time I saw her she was in very sad shape due to the Washington weather and the salt air off the straits!

So, once the Willamette loco had arrived by truck in the town of Port Angelas for display in the small park in the center of town, how was the loco unloaded from that truck? By portable crane? RO-RO? As the television ad used to say, "Inquiring minds want to know!" Thanks and be safe.

John B. Corns  (the real misterwandle)

John,

They ramped her off the trucks in town to get her in place.

Martin

How about a current photo?

Posted from Android

Here are 2 recent photos of her.

Martin

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It's good to see they trimmed back all the growth around her that made it difficult to get pictures when I stopped by on October 19, 2014.

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