Nostalgia & History > Sugar Beets to Hamilton City

California Northern's former SP Hamilton City branch is just barely on hanging today with just two or three short trains a week serving a couple of remaining customers. But in the early and mid 1990's the line saw heavy seasonal traffic with unit sugar beet trains from Oregon's Klamath Basin to the Holly Sugar plant in Hamilton City. The CFNR leased the West Valley line and Hamilton City branch from SP in September 1993 and continued with these trains until Holly closed the plant down in 1996.

The practice when I observed operations in December 1994 was for SP to interchange them to CFNR at Tehama and CFNR would move the train to the branch junction at Wyo and then reverse direction on to the branch via the old south leg of the wye(north leg was removed years ago). This and the track layout at Hamilton City resulted in the railroad placing power on both ends of the train, with two engineers, making for some interesting shortline/flatland "helper" operations. The train on that morning left Tehama and headed down the West Valley main with 55 cars, 7000+ tons with GP15's 104/102 on the point and 100 on the rear. Seen in the photo below just west of Corning just after sunrise.

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The rear of the train with the 100 is now leading the way onto the branch over the old south leg in this view at Wyo. The 102 and 104 are shoving 55 cars back.

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The 102 and 104 lean into 7000 tons of beets on the "wyo" at Wyo.

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Beets head eastward into the morning sun on the Hamilton City branch, December 1994.

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The rear of the train crosses the pristine waters of the Glenn-Colusa Canal on the last lap into Hamilton City.

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Nice shots Shed...sure do like the Cal Northern color scheme!!

Great shots, Bob, of a branchline that I have never had the pleasure of seeing a train on.