When the Logger isn’t running, rides are offered on Jenny railcars. 17, when the weekday schedule drops to two trips. Three trips are offered on weekdays through Aug. During July and August, four trips are offered on Saturdays and Sundays. The Logger operates daily through September. “But this year, we decided to stop and see some other things beside the park.” “We’ve been to Yosemite many times,” Merry Anctil adds. “It made me think about what the lumber industry was like back then,” Paul Anctil says. “It reminds us of our history and the progress we’ve made.”īack at the station, Paul and Merry Anctil, who own a retail lumber yard, smile when asked to assess their forest trip. “I love that whistle for what it means,” Jennifer Hanson says. Daniel and his mother, Jennifer Hanson, are riding the train in memory of Hanson’s father, Harold Taylor of Fowler, who had planned the outing months earlier but died in May. “It’s interesting to imagine what it was like 100 years ago.”Īs the train approaches a forest service road on the way home, Stauffer gives the whistle a long, haunting blast.ĭaniel Hanson, 6, of Tulsa, Okla., grins. “The history and the train is amazing,” Juliet adds. “We were here two years ago,” Kenan Osborne says. “I really enjoy historical things and getting out in nature,” says Dick Killingsworth of Oakhurst, who is riding the train with his wife, Terry, daughter Michele Farris, granddaughter, Hanna Farris, 1, and Terry’s brother, Rick Knabenbauer of Longmont, Colo.įour-year-old Luke Osborne is making his second trip on the Logger, with his sister, Ilana, 2, and parents Kenan and Juliet Osborne of Jersey, an island in the English Channel. Stauffer’s two Shays both burn oil, using 50-60 gallons per trip, along with 400-500 gallons of water.Īt the midway point, Stauffer stops the train to give passengers a chance to stretch their legs, take photographs and ask questions. Steam turns to droplets and falls as a light mist in the engine’s wake. It rushes above through the trees and dislodges dry needles and other debris, which gently float back to earth. Smoke and steam shoot from the engine’s stack. The Shay whooshes and chugs as Stauffer opens the throttle. “Settle back and listen to this engine work,” he says, referring to the 84-ton Shay. Harkenrider puts his microphone away as the train reaches the end of a long downgrade and heads uphill. Several heads crane for a closer look as the train passes through a horseshoe curve built by Chinese laborers with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows. of Tuolumne and were hauled to their current home by truck. Stauffer owns two old Shays: a 60-ton engine built in 1913 and an 84-ton model, dating from 1928, which is the largest narrow-gauge Shay ever built.īoth were purchased from the Westside Lumber Co. The lumber company scrapped its original Shays after the company ceased operations in 1931. The gear-driven Shay locomotive, invented in 1880 by Ephraim Shay, navigated steep grades and tight curves and made a good workhorse for mountain logging. Narrow-gauge tracks span 36 inches between the rails, while the spacing for standard railroad tracks is 56 ½ inches. Every day, the company’s 800 employees produced 80 flat cars loaded with logs. Once trees in one area were cut, the tracks were torn out and extended into a fresh section. The company built narrow-gauge tracks into the forest to haul logs. Boards were rough cut at the mill and then sent to Madera, via a 54-mile flume, where they were planed and dried. The lumber outfit used five Shay locomotives to haul logs to its mill at Sugar Pine, which was on Lewis Creek about three miles south of Fish Camp. With the cars softly clanking, Harkenrider tells about the history of the Madera Sugar Pine Lumber Co. While the big Shay can travel at up to 15 mph, Stauffer eases the throttle as the train descends into the forest. Although trees along the route are thick and lofty, the area was clear-cut during the heyday of the Madera Sugar Pine Lumber Co., which harvested nearly 1.5 billion board feet of lumber on 30,000 acres from 1899 to 1931. The fascinating four-mile trip, which takes about an hour, carries riders through a portion of the Sierra National Forest, about two miles south of Yosemite National Park.
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