Canadian Railroads > Requiem for the Englwood Logging Railway, Part 2

A second day, July 20th, 1983 was spent along the Canfor logging railway.

Canfor provided a campground along Nimpkish Lake, and a pleasant night was spent after sharing stories around a campfire with the families of some of the loggers who worked in the forest and on the railway.

I was travelling with John Garden, the author of several railway and mountaineering books, and at that time a railroader with CP like me.

We were young and energetic, some of those trestle shots involved considerable bush whacking and climbing.

By that time, Dale Sanders had published a comprehensive guide to the Canfor Railway in "CTC Board Magazine", including the location of many trestles.

The first image shows the dispatching office and crew facility at Woss Camp, with an unidentified SW1200 switching an air dump car.

Presently, the "Beaver Cove Job" headed north behind SW1200rs 301. It is shown crossing Twin Creek trestle, along with a Canfor caboose on the tail end.

The northbound "Beaver Cove job" is shown crossing Steele Creek trestle.

We saved the biggest trestle, Noonans Creek for last. While waiting for a train, an "off road" logging truck called a "Mastadon" crossed the Vancouver Island Highway at a marked "Mastadon Crossing". Both tractor and trailer ("bunk") are too wide to travel regular highways and travelled instead on "Logging Mains", private roads which are monitored and dispatched from the dispatching office at Woss Camp. The tractors were built either by Kenworth, or Pacific or Hayes,the last two companies assembled specialized tractors in BC. Note the size difference between the logging truck and my Ford Ranger pickup truck.

The logging main paralleled the railway, and SW1200u 4804 is seen on an S-curve with southbound empties.

Good history of a neat operation.

611

Posted from iPhone

Finally, the wait was over and we caught a loaded log train on Noonans Creek trestle.

Later we caught a light engine move on Gold Creek trestle.

Since our visit, much has changed. Canfor was actively replacing the older wooden trestles with steel bridges, and with culverts.

More and more, trucks were replacing trains getting the logs to Beaver Cove.

Logging itself was getting more mechanized and the "gin pole" was replaced by giant Wagner log loading machines.

A very visible change was the decision to re-engine three of the four SW1200's with Caterpillar diesel engines, which changed their appearance considerably.

The Englewood railway is far from centres of population, and operation as a tourist railway is unlikely. Also, the site is still active with logging activity.

Some of the equipment is deserving of preservation, the S1200's, select log cars and the cabooses and specially one of the logging "speeders".

This is really good stuff. Sad that we need a requiem, but thanks for putting it together.

JBWX

What was amazing was the good weather we had those two days. 1983 had been a strange year for weather in BC and the Pacific Northwest.

Winter hung on forever in the mountains, leaving huge quantities of snow. All of a sudden, in mid-June, summer came with a vengeance with hot temperatures and then torrential rain. The result was a huge run-off which washed out both the railway and Highway 1 in Rogers Pass.

Faced with the prospect of no employment until the tracks were repaired, we went on vacation.

In contrast to the southern half of BC, the north-west coast was having a dry, warm summer.

Bright, sunny days on northern Vancouver Island are far from the norm.

And people wonder why I usually refer to Vancouver Island as God's Country ...

Will MacKenzie
Dundas, ON

I was fortunate in having visited the operation about three or four times, starting in about 1964 through the 1980s. The first time, our visit was arranged by Doug Cummings of Vancouver who's dad worked for CFP on the mainland. Besides Doug, Jack Holst and Jim Gertz were also present. We stayed at the VIP guest house at Woss Camp and had the total run of the place. This was before there were any paved roads into the area. We spent the entire weekend going from camp to camp finding old abandoned equipment on spurs out in the woods, even old Brooks-Scanlon logging cars from Oregon. It was truly a railfan's paradise hidden away in the back country! Jim Gertz and I spent an extra day there, riding the trains we hadn't from the day before. Before the two of us left, the logging manager, Owen Henniger (sp.?), invited us into his office for a little chat. At the time, I was working for Simpson's railroad at Shelton and Jim was working for Rayonier's railroad out of Sekiu. I just about fell out of my chair when Owen asked us "Now you've seen our railroad operation from one end to the other, do you see any way we could improve our operation?". It was a trip I'll never forget, and figured the operation would be there forever, the same way I felt about Simpson's operation at Shelton. Boy was I wrong! I think that the new management, at any place, just don't understand what railroading is all about. So sad!

Pete Replinger

Of course things change and time moves on but I think you hit the nail on the head with this comment. Maybe the woods are not as productive as they had been, but there's really something to be said about how complex a RR operation can be.

Interesting post, thanks to all.

fehorse1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
... I think that the new management, at
> any place, just don't understand what railroading
> is all about. So sad!
>
> Pete Replinger



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/17 11:49 by TCnR.

In the forty years I have been a BC resident, I have seen the logging industry go through great changes. Some include much better stewardship of the forests, some are the result of consolidation of the industry from small independent companies to big conglomerates and some are the result of ever more sophisticated machinery to harvest and process the lumber. The lumber industry helped put Vancouver on the map, well described by singer songwriter Ian Tyson in his ballad "Summer Wages".

Hundreds of small mills have closed, and along with them the logging railroads and roads which served them.

The "Requiem" in the title is in part for the lifestyle of old time logging. The Englewood railway was the very last of many up and down the Pacific Coast of North America.

In BC, little boys dreamed of becoming lumberjacks as well as locomotive engineers.

From what I'm picking up through observations and Internet posts, the remaining transportation of logs by train are the collection of logs from many sources around the Willamette Valley in Oregon that ends up in a port near Rainier for export and the occasional runs of log trains on the old BCR Takla Subdivision / Dease Lake line.

+ youtube shows some log by rail action on the Coos Bay Line as well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/17 14:25 by TCnR.

TCnR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> From what I'm picking up through observations and
> Internet posts, the remaining transportation of
> logs by train are the collection of logs from many
> sources around the Willamette Valley in Oregon
> that ends up in a port near Rainier for export and
> the occasional runs of log trains on the old BCR
> Takla Subdivision / Dease Lake line.
>
> + youtube shows some log by rail action on the
> Coos Bay Line as well.

Is there actually anything at all running, even occasionally on the Takla Sub? It would be nice to see but probably difficult due to the remoteness and other factors. Maybe HoggerDoug could find out.

There was a detailed comment about occasional logging on the Takla Sub, can't seem to find it tonight.

Here's an interesting video clip from 2008:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w19tugri8Yc

Logging Train in Northern British Columbia

Nothing has moved on the Takla Sub in years. My contact at Canfor says that log trains will most likely never move again. BC highway weights and lengths are getting longer and heavier.

Mike Root
Madras, OR

Agree it's all speculation until it happens. The rationale for logging operations is pretty vague as well, watching some of Extreme Logging Arctic operations on the Discovery Channel they seem to like to chip everything and truck it out. This post demonstrates the thought process for large logging ops that didn't happen (but may explain the 2008 youtube Video):

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,2391573,2391902#msg-2391902

Date: 02/11/11 21:29
Rumored Operations on the Takla Sub?

This summer's post by Loleta about the Stuart Sub seems to be the most recent info.

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,4330089,4330095#msg-4330095

Date: 07/03/17 13:20
Trains, Bears, and Terrible Roads
Author: loleta

There's also a couple of people on TO who drive through there on their annual migration to Alaska.

The truck logic is awkward as well, Who would have imagined Oregon log trains right next to I-5 running the length of the Willamette Valley? Imagine my surprise when I spotted them while driving past at 70 mph. Or the run of salvage logs from Arizona that happened a dozen or so years ago. Suppose we just need to keep an eye on the stored log cars.

+ Just looked at Leo Creek on a 2017 satellite photo and noted a handful of rail cars, probably bunk cars or tool cars for MoW.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/17 11:01 by TCnR.