Nostalgia & History > NWP Location Quiz or Help

An unlabeled slide I must confess.The train is late October 1984 and has the power and empties for the Eureka Southern inaugural run November 1 ,1984 out of Willits, California. Bill Webb

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Kind of has the look of an eastbound (northbound) at Cloverdale.  

I will agree with that

The thing I cannot place is anywhere in Cloverdale where there are that many buildings on the east side of the tracks.  Freight is clearly northbound, with the last rays of the setting sun hitting the flanks, which would place the industrial area on the east side of the tracks.  I'm thinking somewhere farther south, but beyond that I couldn't immediately place it. 

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Here's some aerialage from the UCSB Framefinder seems to be some correspondences with the Spider's shot. This aerial is Cloverdale. If spider was shooting here I guess would've been from 101 back then. 

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I thought Cloverdale also and I do like overpass shots, so that is certainly a plausible answer.I looked at current Google Earth or Maps and could not match it up ,but then it was almost 40 years ago.The train was a northbound or rr eastbound and it was late because the chase ended at Ukiah.I think at the time NWP was running out of Ukiah with a turn to Willits. The next day it was showtime at Willits with the EUKA startup.Thanks for the help.Bill Webb 

Me three, can't find an angle to fit the two hills. Maybe it's a little north of where I'm looking but I'm bandwidth limited right now. Also lconsidering the location where the photographer would be standing.

Tryng to figure when the freeway went in, it displaced some of the open space. Quite a bit of work went into the present location, including adding the station building. Also considering the limits of Google Streetview, there's only so many places that the camera car gets into, although I've seen it in some unusual locations.

Interesting photo, good shooting.

Per the photo, it is looking South, { railroad west} towards San Francisco. The Russian river runs to the left of the photo. In the early 90s they re routed highway 101 away from downtown cloverdale, and changed the NWPs right of way to accomodate the new freeway alignment. There were quite a few Mills in town and I believe that one disappeared about the time of all the mess involved with the new construction. 

Okay, I'm convinced.  Location is at north end of Cloverdale, right at what is now the 101/128 (North Redwood Highway) exit. Pretty sure you shot the photo standing off the edge of the pavement just south of where the Old Redwood Highway bridge crosses the tracks.  Top view is the oldest clear imagery Google Earth has available, July 1993, 101 bypass was then under construction.  Second photo is the most current imagery repeat, then the third is about the closest approximation one can get from Google Streetview, the photograph would have been shot from the other side of the fence off the pavement.  The mountains in the bacground all line up.  

Good work, and thanks for sharing this fascinating piece of history!

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV 

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Per switchpoints post here's a markup of the current day aerial to show the old 101 alignment and what not and the mill complexes in spider's photo. I guess 101 used to cross the river just to the left of where spider was standing and ran along the east bank of the river before crossing back over to the west. 

 

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Well there ya go. Moving Google streetview along the off ramp is very convincing.

Had relatives in Cloverdale back in the day and have maybe two photos of the railroad in town, actually the old freight shed. It is surprising how few photos were taken in town, seems like most folks wanted a photo in the canyon, which always has lousy light for a NB freight.

Good discussion and additional info.

Was heading North for a little fishing and stopped to get a few shots of the Cloverdale station...a few weeks later it burned down. Glad I stopped.

Thanks to all for the very informative responses. Mystery solved. Bill Webb