Nostalgia & History > West Side/Pickering Question???

I was doing some processing on my old West Side lumber pix, and ran across this view of No. 3 doing some switching at the Tuolumne mill. The West Side did a lot of intra plant switching, in addition to moving outbound revenue loads to the Sierra.  I had always assumed that the old flat in this picture was an intra plant load.  But today I noticed it said Pickering on the side, and the load appears to be tied down reasonably securely. I wonder if it might have been a load being moved via the Sierra to the Pickering mill at Standard?  The flatcar does not look like it is up to normal interchange standards, but perhaps it is, or perhaps West Side and Pickering had some kind of special agreement with Sierra for moving loads like this locally.  I'm curious if anyone here might know. The picture was taken in October 1960.  No. 3 was originally build narrow gauge for the logging railroad, converted to standard gauge to serve as a plant switcher, sold to Roaring Camp, converted back to narrow gauge, and still works hard hauling tourists to the top of Bear Mountain.

JBWX 

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Did that Pickering Flat go out in interstate service, or what?

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA

Good Question, now you got me wondering. Thank you for sharing.

Posted from Android

I believe your right, they were both owneed by Pickering, so moving loads via railcar was faster and cheaper. Moving product from one mill to another for some order reason

I never thought about it before, but was the mill in Tuolumne a "finish" mill creating finished (planed) lumber or were they rough cut mill?  I must say that load looks like finished lumber to me.

Last week I rode the Roaring Camp and Big Trees narrow gauge up the mountain on a flat car.  Interesting history.  

Earlk Wrote:
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> I never thought about it before, but was the mill
> in Tuolumne a "finish" mill creating finished
> (planed) lumber or were they rough cut mill?  I
> must say that load looks like finished lumber to
> me.
Pretty ratty looking for finished

It was not unheard of for there to be shipments of Tuolumne Mill lumber to either Fassler (adjacent to Standard) for use by the old Standard lumber company (later Pickering Lumber Company), or even in earlier years to Sonora to the Standard Lumber Company. I suspect since this load is on a Pickering lumber company flat, it was being shipped to Fassler. There was also a mill located at Chinese Station.

John Mills

On May 23, 1962, the Pacific Locomoive Association sponsored a walking field trip of the switching operations of Westside, with Heisler #3 used to switch around the mill.  This was at the time the mill itself was not operating due to a strike and the PLA had to get special permission to operate the trip, i.e., all railcars had to be returned to where they started with no effort made to leave cars at the Sierra RR interchange.  There were several interchange cars in the yard and at the mill, all boxcars.  Two of the cars that were switched around that day were two Pickering flats, one empty and one of which was car A106 with a load of unfinished lumber, this time covered with a tarp and the load strapped to the flatcar over the tarps.  It was definately not the same load of lumber as the above photo.  Believe this confirms that unfinished lumber at Westside was taken to the Pickering mill during the period prior to the strike.  TomE  

Thanks for the feedback. It is probably reasonable to conclude that "intra-plant" loads did move back and forth from West Side to Pickering via the Sierra in non-interchange cars, presumably under some kind of special agreement with the Sierra.

JBWX