Steam & Excursion > A unique move on the Siskiyous explaned.

This image was popular on postcards in the years immediatly prior to World War I.  It shows an impressive train running downgrade on Bailey Hill near Hornbrook California.  Prior the Cascade line’s opening in 1926 it was on the mainline of Southern Pacific’s Shasta Route.  Non-tinted versions (with much better detail) can be found on eBay in the thirty-to-sixty-dollar range.  The colorized card shown here is widely available at inexpensive prices.

The story behind the photograph is found in Main Line, Fifty Years of Railroading With the Southern Pacific (1948) by Ernest King, as told to Robert E. Mahaffay, a book well worth seeking out.  Ernest King hired on the railroad in the 1890s as a telegrapher and retired in 1945 as an assistant to the Vice President of Operations.  One of his anecdotes involved his time as chief dispatcher on the Shasta Division, based out of Dunsmuir, around 1910.  He described the logistical challenges and a unique experiment he set up to meet them.  King wrote:

“…in crossing the Shasta Valley, it was necessary to pick up helpers again at Hornbrook to climb the Siskiyous on a 3.3 per cent grade, over bridges and through many tunnels.  The same grade prevailed in both directions from the summit.

It was necessary on this section to arrange for adequate helpers and to use great care in cutting in and cutting out helpers to make sure that the trains or cars did not get away.  It was necessary as well to accurately compute freight-train tonnage to avoid exceeding eighty thousand pounds per operative brake.  It was not unusual for brake shoes to become so hot that the welded to the brake head.

The train- and enginemen who operated this section of the division were harassed also in the winter by heavy snows and ice, but to their credit their performance and adherence to the rules were deserving of the highest praise.

During the time I was chief dispatcher at Dunsmuir I sought some means of improving the methods of operation over the Siskiyous.  The eighty thousand pounds per operative brake feature was a nightmare.  When a train averaged more than eighty thousand pounds per car it was necessary to add empties until the average was down within the required limit.  All of this increased the overtime as well as the consumption of fuel, and held out of service the empties needed for the haul up or down the mountain.

Much of the perishable freight moved daily from California to Oregon and Washington, aggregating two to four trains.  I reasoned that two of these trins could be consolidated into one train of refrigerator cars, the weight of which ran approximately eighty thousand pound each.  Under favorable conditions, by using six engines over the Siskiyou Mountains, I could reduce the number of trains required, or the train miles, approximately fifty per cent.  At the same time, I would be complying with the rule setting a limitation of eighty thousand pounds per operating brake.  We consolidated two trains of perishable freight with a total of fifty-four cars, six engines, and a maximum if eighty thousand pounds per operative break.

E.E. Calvin was then vice president in charge of operations, with headquarters in San Francisco.  An able railroad official, Calvin was a man of few words.  His letters seldom consisted of more than two lines, but they were lines packed with meaning.

As I was violating no rules, I assumed full responsibility.  There was the usual grumbling among the trainmen, who saw in such consolidation a reduction in the number of trains required.  The dispatchers passed the word out along the line, and it was generally expected that something terrible would result from such folly.

As a matter of fact, it was felt by a good number of persons that the train would never make it down the grade.  Wherever trainmen gathered, they predicted a pile up in the canyon.  So sure were a number of people at Hornbrook that a disaster was in the making that they hired a photographer to record the event.  The photographer was stationed with his camera at a long curved fill not far from the town.  The grade was known as Bailey Hill.  He got a beautiful picture, not of a tragedy but of the entire train rolling gracefully down the grade.  Transferred to post cards, the shot sold like wildfire.

It was a fine run, and I was proud of it.  I explained the situation to my superintendent and he thought it a capital idea.  He obtained one of the post cards and forwarded to Calvin along with full details of the incident.

“I suggest, he wrote, “that we adopt this as a regular practice.”  We sat back to await Calvin’s blessing.

Came a reply from Calvin a few days later.  It read:

“Very interesting.  I desire you see to it that it does not happen again.”

So do some of the best ideas come a cropper.”

I am nearly certain this is the image Ernest King described.  The time and place line up perfectly and its appearance on at least three different releases of postcards befit a “shot that sold like wildfire”.  The one discrepancy is five locomotives, rather than the six he described.  This might be explained by  the nearly forty years between the incident and its telling, or perhaps a sixth locomotive is pushing from outside the frame.

-Dan







 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/21 09:58 by haneckow.

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Thanks,Dan.

Interesting story and thanks for referencing the book. Here's a Google streetview from I-5 near the RR overpass almost to the Hilt off ramp, the profile of the hill in the background matches the hill in the postcard. The RR would be in the left area of the streetview, the tracks wind around meadows and hills in the foreground hills, Hornbrook and the Ag station is downhill to the right side. CORP operates through here pretty much daily. There seems to have been an overpass at that location from the time the RR was built, there's photos and descriptions of it available if you look in the right places.
t4p.

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Dan.....a Trainmaster article?   love the ending.......Arlen

Imagine being the crew in that 3rd engine while going full throttle thru Summit Tunnel..??  Yikes.