Steam & Excursion > Now, Only Children Play On This Once Proud Steam Locomotive!

The end of the line for some steam locomotives came slowly as in this case of this once proud 2-6-0 parked out behind the enginehouse at Fruit Growers Supply Camp 10 near Westwood, California.  By this time in her career, she has shed her tender and a few other parts to keep the other former Red River Lumber Co. locomotives in service.

She had been built back in 1899 by the Brooks Locomotive Works as the #111 for the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad that ran between north central Pennsylvania and Western New York.  When her service there was over, she was sold in 1906 to the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad out of Tonopah, Nevada.  She was given the #3 on the LV&T.  Then, in 1914 she was purchased by the Red River Lumber Co. and shipped to their new operation in Westwood.

Among the children the grew up in Camp 10 was Melvin Delgato.  He describes his memories of old #3 as follows:

"When I was a kid, there were 3 locomotives at Camp 10.  There was the Two-Spot, the Four-Spot and the Five-Spot.  The Four-Spot and the Five-Spot were Shay Locomotives, while the Two-Spot was a side-rod.  The Three-Spot was behind the cookhouse.  It had been retired and was used for parts.  Once in a while, I would sneak back there and climb in the cab of old No. 3 and pull on the throttle handle and go 'choo, choo' real quietly until it got the best of me.  Then I would ring the bell and run like crazy."

This photo must have been taken after Melvin's time in her cab as her bell has already departed in this view.  While she has lost a bit of her luster from her early days, she was still able to capture the imagination of a young boy.

Martin



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/20 03:01 by LoggerHogger.

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Did it loose a driver & axle somewhere?

​W.

 

W. ???

Dave

wcamp1472 Wrote:
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> Did it loose a driver & axle somewhere?
>
> ​W.
>
>  

Looks like a normal 2-6-0 to me. Why do you ask?

The original post listed it as
2-8-0!

I was poking fun at the typo..
( since corrected by O.P.; See correcting edits record)


W.

(My own fat-fingers cause all sorts of problems... I still loathe ‘auto-correct’ spell checkers!)

Posted from iPhone



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/20 11:39 by wcamp1472.

You will see a number of "edits" on each of my posts.  That is not due to errors usually it is because I add to the story as I post it.  I will do a paragraph then post it.  Then I will add another paragraph and post it.  That shows as an "edit" when it is simply me adding additional material to the original post.

I do usually find my own typos and change them myself as I proof read the post as I did here.  When people see a typo that I missed, they usually send me a private message so a thread like this of mine does not get hijacked over a simple typo that I already caught, as this one sadly was hijacked.

Martin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/20 11:56 by LoggerHogger.

wcamp1472 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The original post listed it as
> 2-8-0!
>
> I was poking fun at the typo..
> ( since corrected by O.P.; See correcting edits
> record)
>
>
> W.
>
> (My own fat-fingers cause all sorts of problems...
> I still loathe ‘auto-correct’ spell
> checkers!)
>
> Posted from iPhone

Then don't use it! It can be turned off.

Martin no matter how you do your post they are a welcome morning read for me on here and always look forward to them. Computers have typo viruses built in  they have to have.

I... don't think this engine was Las Vegas & Tonopah #3. From whatever little research I've gathered up of her, she was a Brooks 2-8-0 and only found two pictures to date showing how she would've looked. Rather vauge ones though... Both in Robert M. Hanft's "Red River: Paul Bunyn's Own Lumber Company and its Railroads" on pgs. 148 and 151 respectively, the former I've provided as an attachment. Looks way off from the engine you showed...

Apparently it was also seen in one of Helen Holmes' motion pictures, but I have yet to see said film where #3 starred in myself...

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All rosters and resources I have at my disposal do indeed show the LV&T #3 as a 2-8-0, so it cannot be this engine.  The history of the locomotive Martin posted appears to be the following, gleaned from several sources:

Baldwin c/n 23256, built 1903 for Quakerstown & Eastern Railroad; to Ocean Shore Railroad #4.  Rick Hamman's California Central Coast Railways shows this locomotive and Ocean Shore 6 leased to San Vicente Lumber Company between 1920-1922, who used them to haul log trains over the Ocean Shore from a connection with the company's logging railroad near Swanton in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Davenport down to the Santa Cruz mill.  Hamman's roster shows San Vicente bought the #4 in 1922, then in 1923 the company transfered this machine along with one of the company's Shays to the Nibley-Stoddard Lumber operations at Cromberg, California, but it's also worth noting David Myrick in his narrative about the N-S operation in Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California Volume 3 only mentions the Shay and he did not cover this operation in the rosters in his Volume 2 book.  Going back to Hamman, he shows Nibley-Stoddard selling this locomotive to FGS in 1928, about the time the Cromberg sawmill closed, FGS initially numbered it 34, then later renumbered it to #3, and then scrapped it in 1942.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV   

Great research, Jeff!

Posted from iPhone