Steam & Excursion > There Are Clues Here To This Steam Photos Location And It's Date!

Sometimes you have nothing written on a negative sleeve to tell you of the location or date of a particular image.  When that happens, you hope that the image itself contains some clues that will help tell you where and roughly when an image was shot.  That's what we have here in this fine image of Western Pacific 2-8-8-2 #255.  Fortunately it does give us the clues we need to tell us where and roughly when this image was taken.

While there is not much background in the photo to tell us much, it is the foreground that contains the clues.  There in the bottom right of the photo we see a parked string of log cars.  Those cars are quite distinctive and are easy to identify as the narrow gauge skeleton log cars of the Swayne Lumber Company of Oroville, California.  This places the location of the photo as the Swayne Lumber mill grounds in Oroville right next to the WP mainline. 

We know that WP #255 was built in 1931.  We also know that Swayne Lumber Co. shut down it's logging railroad in 1938 and sold all 99 of these skeleton log cars to the West Side Lumber Co. of Tuolumne, California in 1939.  With the weathering seen on #255 our best guess for this photo is between 1937 and 1939.

There are often clues in any unmarked photo, if you know where to look.

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/20 03:02 by LoggerHogger.

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Look like 3' gauge skeleton log cars before then went to West Side Lumber.Co.   

Excellent image!  And, if I am recalling the track layout at Swayne correctly, plus judging by the smoke color, I would guess that WP 255 is heading into the Feather River Canyon up the constant 1% grade.

Thanks for posting!

Z

Photo was great, but giving us a example on how to fine clues was fantastic.  I learned from you.
Thanks, 
Denny Thompson

drgdenny@msn.com
 

Knowing that the 251 class operated almost exclusively on the 3rd Subdivision between Oroville and Portola helps too.

It's all in the details. Nice detective work !

LoggerHogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sometimes you have nothing written on a negative
> sleeve to tell you of the location or date of a
> particular image.  When that happens, you hope
> that the image itself contains some clues that
> will help tell you where and roughly when an image
> was shot.  That's what we have here in this fine
> image of Western Pacific 2-8-8-2 #255. 
> Fortunately it does give us the clues we need to
> tell us where and roughly when this image was
> taken.
>
>
> Martin

Wow, you could start a new TV series, "History Detectives - Railroad Edition."  Great detective work!

Martin:

Thanks for the photo!

Your breakdown and analysis of the "evidence" in the photo was also great. Ironically, as I was reading your analysis I flashed back to the old Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone as the remarkable Mr. Holmes!

Elementary!

John Mills