This morning I saw three box cars with names of companies I never heard of before. They are Sierra Railroad Company, Seattle & North Coast Railway & McCloud River Railroad. The latter had a painting of a bear with a salmon in its mouth. Does anyone know of these companies, where they operated & if they got absorbed into a larger rail company[?]
Seattle & North Coast operated MILW’s trackage on the Olympic Peninsula for a few years after MILW abandoned its Pacific Coast Extension. It’s only connection to the rest of the world was by carfloat. It was abandoned for lack of traffic in the early 1980’s.
The McCloud River Railroad runs from Burney to a connection with the UP at Mt Shasta City. The freight business is about to go bye bye as the track from McCloud to Burney is being abandoned. They will continue to run the dinner trains between Mt Shasta City and McCloud though.
The Sierra Railroad, commonly known as the movie railroad because it’s used so much in them for historic settings. Didn’t know they had modern cars for interchange.
All three of those railroads had box cars during the incentive-per-diem box car mania of the late 1970s. With the possible exception of some of the McCloud River cars (that line is now the McCloud Railroad–“River” has been dropped under new ownership), these cars are being operated under other reporting marks.
I would imagine that all three were former I-Tell leases. I know that the SNCT and Sierra had them.
Why would the Sierra have such “modern” equipment? They are, after all, a modern freight railroad. You can’t live on a movie every year or two.
Was the Sierra Railroad used for the train scenes in Stand By Me where the 4 young lads went looking for the body struck by the train[?]
Docster - Where did you see these cars? I’m always on the lookout for Seattle & North Coast equipment, the only one’s I’ve seen recently were in Michigan. I’d be interested to know where else they’ve ended up.
Hawkeye251.
I saw these cars on the same Canadian Pacific train in Calgary just west of the Alyth Yard. I really have no idea which part of the country or North America they came from but my guess is they came up from the Coutts/Sweetgrass exchange due south of here. There is an exchange of rail cars at that border crossing between Canadian Pacific & BNSF.
Sorry I can’t help you more. [:)]
Hawkeye251- what’s a college student from Maryland doing with an ID like that?
(Sorry for jumping off-topic, I just had to ask)[:D]
//the real Hawkeyes reside here
The former SNCT cars I’ve recently seen are now lettered either IATR or HS. The ex-MR cars are also now lettered HS. There’s nothing preventing these cars from showing up anywhere–they’re basically free-runners, to the best of my knowledge.
Thanks Docster, I wouldn’t be surprised if they came off the BNSF… though I suppose it would be equally likely for them to come from anywhere else. I just think I remember reading somewhere that BN absorbed a lot of them when S&NC was selling off its assets.
CShaveRR - IATR… is that Iowa Traction? I’ve never heard of HS before. Is that a railroad or some sort of car leasing operation?
I believe I was watching a 24 hour MAS*H marathon when I signed up for the account… I didn’t even think about the whole Iowa being the Hawkeye State thing…
I don’t know this to be the case, but the “HS” could be the Hot Springs Railroad (or Railway), a former MoPac branch that serves Hot Springs, AR. Don’t know if it still goes out to Mountain Pine, which 20 years ago was the site of a good-sized sawmill.
HS is–are you ready for this?–the H&S Railroad Company! It was previously the Hartford & Slocomb, an Alabama Shortline owned by the Itel Rail Corporation. Itel’s successor, General Electric Rail Services Corporation, uses HS reporting marks for a lot of equipment on which per diem charges can be collected.
Yes, IATR is the Iowa Traction Railroad Company.
In addition to the lumber mill on the Sierra Railroad also has the contract for switching at the industrial park at the old Riverbank (California) ordinance plant. Plus they bought out Yolo Shortline (including the switching for the McClellan industrial park in Sacramento) and the California Western. The company is now appearently called the Sierra Northern.
They also have, it appears, 50 center beam flatcars (SERA 73000-73049 or 73001-73050) in pool service.
Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about the McCloud River…
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails
For the record…the present company is the McCloud Railway Company, not the McCloud Railroad.
I have a lot of information on the McCloud boxcars on the following page:
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/Equipment/Boxcars.html
Docster- Stand By Me was filmed on two different railroads. The scene of the four kids being chased across the bridge by the train was filmed on the McCloud River Railroad…the bridge is the railroad’s impressive steel trestle across Lake Britton, near Burney, CA, which is featured in several photos on the following page:
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/AlongTheLine/LakeBritton.html
There were a few other miscellaneous shots on the McCloud, including one of the four kids walking past the water tank at Bartle.
The other railroad used in the filming, and the one that appears the most, is the Oregon Pacific & Eastern, which up until the early 1990’s ran east from Cottage Grove, OR. When watching the movie look at the ballast on the tracks- all scenes with gray ballast were filmed on the OP&E, all scenes with reddish ballast were filmed on the McCloud River.
The steam locomotive used in the bridge scene was McCloud River #25, a 1925-built Alco 2-6-2. The McCloud River purchased it new, and it has been handing around McCloud (although not always owned by the railroad) ever since.
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/LocoImages/Loco-0025.html
Filming in Oregon used OP&E #19, a Baldwin 2-8-2 logging mikado built new for an Arkansas logger in 1915. The locomotive spent some time in Mexico before coming to the McCloud River in 1924. In 1953 the McCloud sold the locomotive to the nearby Yreka Western Railroad, where it operated until around 1970, when Kyle Railways (parent company to both the YW and the OP&E) sent the locomotive no