Picture shows a log train crossing the bridge over the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River at Beardsley Flat. Two gear driven engines are required to haul a maximum 20 car load train of logs up the 2.2% adverse grade from the River to Schoettgen Pass. A large irrigation and power dam will be built downstream from this bridge during the next year or two. Upon completion of the project, the railroad will run atop the dam across the River.' The elevation map shows that this Middle Fork crossing was at 3,222 feet.
Even though it is no longer in use, Shay 33 still survives. In 1966 the engine was re-lettered to Sugar Pine RY #33 and then, as the use of logging trucks became more common, it was re-lettered to Timber Heritage Association #33 and transported to Glendale, California. As of 2009, Shay 33 isn’t currently lettered under a company, but it is still owned by the Timber Heritage Association and stored at the old Hammond Lumber Company roundhouse in Samoa, California.
Back when I was a kid, Pickering had the reputation as a sort of "wild man" of logging companies in Tuolumne County. My grandfather on mom's side built a house in Sonora, more or less, using a lot of free scrap lumber from Pickering's mill. He may not have been using the choicest boards, but the house is still there. Back in the day you used what you could.
And look at the size of those logs! What beautiful timber they were harvesting back then!
Thanks, Elmo!
Up until 1967, when they shut down the railraod, it came right through my front yard once a day loaded down with huge logs. Those where the days
ReplyDeleteAmazing railroading. There is a video of this at Catenary Video. Guy worked two weeks straight night and day (20 hr days) and got a check for $90.
ReplyDeleteCool!
Deletehttps://www.catenaryvideo.com/dvd/p/pickerings-sugar-pine
Very cool! I ordered two - one for me and another for a guy I occasionally work with named Pickering (he claims no relation, unless distant).
DeleteI'm going to get this one too.
Deletehttps://www.catenaryvideo.com/dvd/p/narrow-gauge
A very dear friend of mine who passed away 25 years ago rode that gondola across the canyon with his brother when he was 10 (in the late '30s). They used to spend their summers watching a friend of their fathers fall the big trees at Pino Grande, timber land owned by Michigan-California Lumber Company. They'd carry his gas jugs, water and gear for him.
Pickering was forced out of biz when the forest service took their redwood tract near the Big Trees. They ran out of wood. But their incline operations were nothing short of incredible feats of engineering. The cable cost 10 grand and lasted less than 2 years before it had yo be replaced. When men did manly things.
ReplyDeletesadly. there are not many trees like that anymore. it takes a hundred years or more to grow a tree like that.
ReplyDeleteFor almost 40 years, Forest Service policy has been to not cut a green tree that is 30" dbh or larger. Those trees today could easily be in excess of 5 or 6 feet in diameter, or what you would call 'old growth'.
DeleteTrees are America's renewable resource. It's an amazing thing.
I live in a house that was made from lumber milled at the old Standard Lumber Company when it was in south Sonora. This was before it moved to the newly created town of Standard, and was bought out by Pickering. It is four of their migrant worker shacks nailed together.
ReplyDelete