"Season's Greetings from Pickering Lumber Corporation, Standard, California." Image on a Christmas card showing Pickering Lumber Company's Shay 33 and a second engine pulling a full load of large logs across the former bridge at the head of Beardsley Flat

 

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!