McCloud 37 reversed onto "Wisconsin Valley" and the Second Section of our train. Black Butte is in the background.
Our Second Section departing the McCloud River Railroad/Union Pacific Interchange Yard bound for McCloud.
Our Second Section leaving Mount Shasta City.
Mount Shasta stood out in front as we started up the 4.4 percent grade.
Approaching the grade crossing where tomorrow, passengers sleeping in Mount Shasta City will board, and I will transfer to the chase bus to Klamath Falls.
We stopped briefly to put out a small trackside fire that the First Section started.
The rear of our Second Section.
Our Second Section stopped at Milepost 14 to put out several small trackside fires then continued up the grade, but about half a mile later, McCloud 37 shut down and the crew tried to restart it but it would not stay on, since while it started, it then stopped. To add insult to injury, the train started to slowly roll back down the grade. But we only moved a few feet when Steve Sandberg, Mr. Milwaukee Road 261, came to the rear of the locomotive and turned the brake wheel then went though the train, applying all the car's hand brakes. He returned to the locomotive, where he and the Amtrak road foreman studied the problem. Next Steve took a broom and stuck the handle into the engine in order to keep the its dampers open. The engine was able to be re-started and with the broom handle being held by Steve, it stayed on. He would now have to hold the broom handle to keep the dampers open for the rest of the climb to the summit at Pierce.
Steve Sandberg kept our locomotive working.
The view looking back captured Black Butte behind our train.
Steve certainly did a great job keeping us moving. All passengers wanted to take this opportunity to thank Steve for not only this, but everything he did to make this excursion a great success.
Looking back at Big Canon.
Ryan Wilkerson caught me in the vestibule and Steve was still hard at work as we passed by his photo location here.
Alex caught the First Section of our train with green flags flying.
Later, he caught our Second Section with red flags, also taken at Big Canon with McCloud 37 leading.
A going-away shot of "Cedar Rapids" by Alex at the same location.
A curve, a look back and a view of the train and Mount Shasta.
Once we reached the Summit at Pierce, the engineer switched on the dynamic braking system and the locomotive then ran fine and Steve's duties were done. We ran to the Signal Butte switchback, where we found all of the First Section passengers off their train taking pictures of our train. The plan was to offload our passengers here so we could also photograph the McCloud dinner train arriving, but because of our problems coming over the hill from Mount Shasta City, we were over an hour late getting here. We asked our car attendant about detrianing, but he knew nothing and sounded like Sergeant Schultz on "Hogan's Heros". We asked him to find out if we could get off or not but never saw him again the rest of the trip until he detrained in McCloud. The train pulled all the way down the switchback to near the First Section.
We passed the old turntable pit four times as we travelled back and forth.
We all still stayed onboard. After a few minutes, we reversed past all the photographers up the line towards Mount Shasta City to let off our passengers going on the McCloud dinner train.
As we neared the switch, the dinner train came up the hill from McCloud then after our dinner train passengers detrained, we pulled by the photographers again to clear track space for the dinner train to arrive so they could go to Mount Shasta City. This lack of communication could have been avoided if all onboard crew members had walkie-talkies so they could reach the people who made the trip decisions. With any large group, good communications are a must for a successful trip.
Our Second Section started reversing down the 4.4 percent grade towards McCloud and this view occurred.
Our train slowly reversing.
Mount Shasta once again was visible.
The stand for the former water tank at Hooper.
McCloud 37 returned us to flat ground at McCloud and reversed us in to a track by the engine house, ending a fantastic day of train riding on this Trains Unlimited Tours trip and I detrained.
The Second Section.
McCloud SD38 37, built by Electro-Motive Division in 1969.
Once we all detrained, everyone boarded two buses that would take us to the site of the former McCloud River Railroad depot that had burned to the ground since my last visit. This is where the First Section was dropped off. Here we found the bus to our hotel for the night. I found my bus and once our driver turned on the air conditioning, it cooled down. Chris Skow then gave us our choice of pickup times to return to McCloud, either at 5:00 AM to board the train there or 7:45 AM to be taken to the grade crossing outside of Mount Shasta City. Our bus driver took us back over the hill to Mount Shasta City to the Mount Air Motel and once I checked in, I found a store for some snacks for my breakfast then called it a night after a fantastic day of train riding.
There were problems in Mount Shasta City overnight. No directions were given to passengers about the McCloud 18 photo freight the next morning and the bus driver taking passengers to the Strawberry Court was not given good directions to get to that hotel, so it took a long time for the passengers to reach there. Those taken to the Motel 6 in Weed had to pay for their own rooms due to a major mixup by that hotel but Trains Unlimited covered their expenses as long as they submitted their hotel receipts.
