Nostalgia & History > California & Oregon Coast RR / Hobbs, Wall & Co. RR / & neighbors

I recently updated and greatly expanded my website’s California & Oregon Coast Railroad page to include coverage of the little-known railroads near its planned destination of Crescent City, CA - primarily the operations of Hobbs, Wall & Co. You can find the page HERE. I am hoping that some of you may be able to fill in blank spots.

Briefly, in the early 20th Century, C&OC planned to build a railroad from Grants Pass, OR to Crescent City, CA, but it only managed to complete the first 15 of the intended approximately 90 mile route. It later survived as an industrial carrier until the mid 1950’s. C&OC intended to utilize a few miles of a common carrier logging railroad owned by Hobbs, Wall & Co. to gain entry to Crescent City. Variously, that line operated as Crescent City & Smith River, Del Norte Southern and finally under the Hobbs, Wall & Co. name.

At one time, or another, four other railroads operated near Crescent City. They are also covered.

Hobbs, Wall & Co’s loco roster proved to be particularly interesting. Instead of the three locos generally assigned to its operations by the rosters I’ve seen, I found that it actually owned at least 12, but more likely 13, locos during its existence. Below is a screenshot from the webpage showing the 1920's-30's roster as I currently contemplate it. The CC&SR and DNS rosters accompany this on the webpage.

There’s still much to be learned, particularly about HW&Co.

Ed Gibson
Wx4.org

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/19 06:09 by hogheaded.

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