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Simpson Lumber to close sawmill, railroad
Sound Transit would probably be interested in that line. Otherwise, it is a great opportunity for a tourist railway or railway museum.
With the old mill being replaced with a new one, rail will still be required if only as a means of providing an alternative to trucking the finished product to market. Shouldn’t need all the present engines though.
From the looks of the tiny ‘toothpicks’ on that train, methinks the USFS had a lot to do with the economic viability of the mills. Maybe the spotted owls, too.
Shelton is heavily dependent on the mills. It might be only 2 hrs from Seattle but it’s 50 years away too. White, Blue collar and Folgers coffee. It’s a small berg with a long long history of logging and lumbering. The rail line location doesn’t go “anywhere” but might be suitable for a tourist line
It says there are only 4 comments, so I assume nobody has responded to Mr. Vinson. Sound Transit would not be interested because the location is across Puget Sound from their operations. However, Shelton would make a great location for a tourist railroad. I taped operations on the Puget Sound & Pacific some 15 years ago, and that railroad is the outlet for finished lumber. I shot views of some operations on the Simpson Railroad, but only a cameo or two survived editing onto the published tape. The other scenes are on tapes that need to be sorted in order to preserve scenes that are likely to become historic. That is one of many items on my “bucket list.” I have to live quite a few more years before I kick that bucket.
The town of Shelton was hurting big time when I was there. The highway had passed them by as it traversed the land along the west side of Puget Sound, and Wal-Mart had put a store up top. They were trying to save all the retail space that had either migrated toward Wal-Mart or was starving for customers because they had not moved out of downtown.
Reviewed Mr. Hays’ comment regarding USFS policy and toothpicks, and he is quite right. Back when I was there the train to the inland mill ran as needed to carry small diameter logs up to that mill which was designed to process them. From the looks of the train there are a lot more small diameter logs going inland now, which should mean that more toothpicks are being floated down the bay to Shelton now that some 15 years ago.
As the sign showing a spotted owl tied down to a logging truck said, “Did you ever try to build a home with one of these?”
It is interesting how all comments are from the southwest? We have not had lumber mills with raw logs in decades. And yet no comments on the loss of this dying industry in the US.
The mill site was purchased by Sierra Pacific. They in turn will be building a new state of the art mill at that location. And with them doing that, one would think they would retain the short line logging railroad, as it beats trucking all the logs to the mill. Either way, that is great news for the city and the region. It will be up and running in 2017.