Steam & Excursion > A Follow-Up On My Post On The Strassel Siding On The PR&N!

A couple of days ago I posted a photo of the siding and little depot at Strassel on the Southern Pacific's Tillamook Branch.  I did this after being contacted by the great granddaughter of Mary Strassel whose farm the PR&N had gone through and who the siding is named after.

In looking for more photos of Strassel for the family, I decided to see what H.L. Arey had done to preserve the siding on film.  Here are 2 of the photos that I found.

In the first, we see that Arey has caught SP 4-8-0 #2949 acting as helper on a log train passing through Strassel in 1921.  In the next, we see another SP 4-8-0, this time the #2937 waiting at Strassel to be added onto the next train through to help it up the grade to the summit at Cochran.  This would be the now, famous, "Strassel Flip" that related to me by Mary Strassel's great granddaughter.

Finding the photo of #2937 at Strassel was made even more special for me when I realized this is the same SP 4-8-0 that I have the spot plate and the backhead plate off.  As it turns out, even though Oregon was home to many of the 4-8-0's that Alco built for the SP, and many of those were scrapped in Portland, it has proven very difficult for plate collectors to find any plates off these old workhorses.

Thus, we have a little more history recorded for the spot called Strassel on the PR&N.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/21 04:13 by LoggerHogger.

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Wonderful.
Your narratve helps remind us of how railroads connected with, served, and shaped our communities.
Great as our locomotives were/are, they are lifeless without the people who buy, build, maintain, and run them.
With your story we can all be thinking like those engine crews, alert to a chance for a good call and return home.
 

Great images, and are there really no binder chains on those loads?
—Mac

MacBeau Wrote:
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> Great images, and are there really no binder
> chains on those loads?
> —Mac

That's correct.  Binder chains did not come into use until many years later.

Martin

Martin,
Would that been the case on the Klamath Branch as well? I recall Jack Bowden addressing this issue in his book and noting the SP was making the GN use six binder chains per car when they where using only four. Then seeing your post where there were none was what caught my eye.
Thanks,
—Mac

LoggerHogger Wrote:
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> That's correct.  Binder chains did not come into
> use until many years later.
>
> Martin

The smaller pine logs in the Klamath Basin that were hauled on the SP were given binder chains earlier than the large fir and spruce logs on the SP Tillamook Branch.

Martin

I knew there was a logical explanation, and I thank you.
—Mac

LoggerHogger Wrote:
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> The smaller pine logs in the Klamath Basin that
> were hauled on the SP were given binder chains
> earlier than the large fir and spruce logs on the
> SP Tillamook Branch.
>
> Martin

Interesting!

Isn't the helper, #2949, actually a TW-2 class 4-8-0?

It's pretty clear that "2-8-0" in connection with 2949 is a typo.

But I have a trickier question -- Strassel is on the eastern slope of the coast range.  The train with a helper at Strassel would therefore be geographically westbound.  Why would they be hauling logs from east to west?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/21 22:12 by Elesco.