The snowplow spreader has the saying
"Wing and a Prayer" above the
number 1850. The old passenger car had one truck off the track,
which is out of view in the photograph. Mt. Shasta is above the
far end of the old passenger car.
The crane dates back to the McCloud
River Railroad Company. The
logo shows a bear on a log in front of Mount Shasta. According to
the McCloud Railway web site, the crane has 25 to 30 ton capacity.
Above, the rest of the work train is
shown. There was a scarry
looking m/w brushing machine. I would not want to be in its path
when the blades are rotating. More m/w equipment was stored
inside a large shed. Several other pieces were out in the
open. Some town of McCloud homes are just past the track and
equipment.
At this point in our walk, we were in
town. McCloud
had an all day flea market which was being dismantled. The dinner
train was there waiting for passengers to show up for the evening
train. SD-38 engine number 38, a vintage non-turbocharged EMD
SD-38 manufactured in April 1969, handles dinner train duties.
I did not examine the consist very
closely, but MR 2801, the Trinity
car was behind an open air flat car.
Many of us found Floyd's Restaurant
where most
had the tri-tip sandwich, which looked good. We left
McCloud at 7:15 PM and those who wanted to, went up the Hambone Branch
to a vista
point of Mt. Shasta. Nighttime running in a motorcar was quite
fun.
Mount Shasta is visible in both
photographs below with a mushroom cloud
obscuring the summit.
The vista was quite beautiful to the
east of Mt. Shasta.
Nighttime photography of other motorcars yielded some interesting
results. The West Side Lumber Company motor car sports antlers
above the windshield, a perfect irreverent reflection of its owner,
John Martin of Wasco, California.
The end point of our evening run was
up to
Car A, where the line was blocked by at least a dozen box cars stuck
over the winter. Most motorcars were turned around on the spot or
run to a crossing and turned, then onto Bartle for the night. On
the return, Bill told me that the 30 miles of the Hambone Branch
owned by the BNSF Railway and leased to McCloud were removed from
Lookout to McCloud property at Hambone. BNSF had too little
business to maintain the interchange point.
On the way back to Burney, I observed that the local deer must prefer
Shasta County over Siskiyou County. Soon after crossing the
county link, we saw two deer in our path. After that, we slowed
down to avoid any collision incident with Bambi. Later in the
evening at the motel in Burney, I bumped into several guys who were
part of the speeder trip. One of them mentioned the movie "Stand
By Me" which featured the Burney Branch trestle over Lake Britton and
the water tower at Bartle. The plan for Sunday is to run from
Bartle to Hambone to view Mt. Shasta again, then back to McCloud and on
to Shasta, the interchange point with the Union Pacific.
