McCloud Railway
The McCloud Railway was a class III railroad operated around Mount Shasta, California. It began operations on July 1, 1992 when it took over operations from the McCloud River Railroad. The MCR was incorporated on April 21, 1992.
The MCR provided both freight service as well as passenger excursion trains like the Shasta Sunset Dinner Train.
Freight traffic consisted of outbound lumber and forest products as well as diatomaceous earth. Approximately 3,000 carloads of freight were handled annually.
The MCR interchanged with the Union Pacific railroad at Mount Shasta, California.
On June 27, 2005, the railroad applied with the Surface Transportation Board to abandon most of its line. The proposal requests to abandon all MCR track beyond east of McCloud, California.
Route
The railroad operated on of track. The principal line ran from Mt. Shasta to Bartle. At Bartle, the Burney Branch headed south. The MCR also had a branch running from Bartle to Hambone, California. At Hambone the ownership changed to BNSF Railway but was operated by the McCloud River Railroad. That line extended to Lookout Junction where it connected with the Great Northern Railway mainline just north of Bieber, California. The BNSF track east of Hambone was abandoned and removed by A&K Railroad Materials in October 2005.History
The MCR was originally built as the McCloud River Railroad chartered on January 22, 1897, as a forest railway bringing logs to the company sawmill on the Southern Pacific Railroad at a place called Upton a few miles north of Mount Shasta, California. By 1901 the company sawmill was moved to McCloud, and the distance for hauling lumber produced at McCloud was reduced to by shifting the junction south to Mount Shasta in 1906. The locomotives shifted from wood to oil fuel as the railroad extended into the forests east of McCloud in 1907. Trains brought logs to the McCloud sawmill from the east, and carried lumber from the sawmill west to the Southern Pacific.In 1922 Pacific Gas and Electric Company built branches south from the McCloud main line at Bartle to build hydropower plants on the Pit River. Materials to build the Pit 1 powerhouse, the Pit 3 Dam, and the Pit 4 Dam were carried over the McCloud River Railroad to connection with the Pit River Railroad officially known as the Mount Shasta Corporation Construction Railroad. This activity encouraged the Great Northern and Western Pacific Railroads to claim a share of this traffic by building a branch west from their line at Lookout, California in 1931 giving McCloud interchange with three major railroad companies. After PG&E abandoned their Pit River Railroad, McCloud extended the former PG&E line south to Burney, California in 1955. Upon reaching Burney, McCloud operated a railroad including trackage rights over the Great Northern branch.
The railroad remained primarily a logging railroad with several different owners over the following years including: U.S. Plywood Corporation, U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers, Champion International, and Itel Corporation. The railroad was sold to Jeff E. and Verline Forbis on July 1, 1992. On June 28, 2005, the railroad petitioned the STB to abandon most of its line. Service on all line east of the McCloud Sawmill has been terminated. A small section of line between McCloud CA and Mount Shasta CA remained open briefly for excursion and dinner train service. As timber demand declined, the railroad slowly cut back although new ownership also led to its downfall. In 2009, the railroad ceased operation and closed down. The property is now for sale as a rail/trail as of 2012.
The railroad also had regular passenger service until 1952.
The railroad's bridge over Lake Britton was used in an iconic scene in the film Stand by Me.
Rolling stock
built two Shay locomotives for McCloud River Railroad in February 1912. Builders numbers 2401 and 2402 wore McCloud River numbers 16 and 17 until sold in 1924 to Fruit Growers Supply Company of Susanville, California as numbers 4 and 5.During the latter days of steam, summer trains often included a fire car behind the engine. The fire car was a tank car filled with water topped by an automobile engine-powered pump.
Starting in 1948, the railroad began to order Baldwin diesels, mustering 8 diesels in 1964. The road used Baldwin's DRS-6-6-1500/AS-616 series due to their impressive traction effort; far more than any ALCo or EMD offering at the time. In the later 1950s, with the opening of the Burney branch, the road bought two RS12 units, one S12, and one S8.
In the 1960s, the Baldwins were almost twenty years old, and were showing their age. The road bought three secondhand units from Southern Pacific; an AS-616 and two DRS-6-6-1500s. Unit #28 was damaged in the early 1960s in a wreck, and the unit was shoved behind the shops and cannibalized for parts. The AS-616 and one DRS-6-6-1500 were painted for the road; the second DRS-6-6-1500 was cannibalized for parts without use. All Baldwins were sold in 1969 to various scrap companies and shortlines, upon the arrival of new power.
To relieve the aging Baldwin diesels, the railroad bought three EMD SD38 locomotives numbered 36-38 in April 1969. The units were used for all duties along the line, and as traffic increased on the road, the railroad ordered a single SD38-2, built August 1974. When the property was put up for sale in 1998, Union Pacific showed interest. UP bought the single SD38-2, leaving the other 3 SD38's. The SD38's soldiered on under new ownership. Ironically, the first unit ordered, 36, encountered problems and was cannibalized for parts to keep the other two SD38's running in 2005. All three were sold to the Dakota Southern Railroad for use on their line.
The railroad, starting in 1995, also had two ex-McCloud River Railway steam locomotives, no.s 18 and 25. No. 18 was sold to the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in 2005.
No. 25, the steam engine which appeared in Stand By Me and also Bound for Glory, was out of service from 2001 until September 2007, when it was rebuilt for another movie deal, but that one fell through. The No. 25 was then stored in McCloud in operable condition. Both No 18 & 25 are oil burning locomotives. No. 18 made her first revenue run on the V&T on July 24, 2010. No. 25 was sold to the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad in March 2011 for their excursion operations out of Garibaldi, Oregon.
In 1994, McCloud Railway leased an ex-McCloud steam engine and had it painted as McCloud River Railroad 19. The unit was used to see if there was enough of an interest in a tourist train on the line, and was tested in April 1994. The test was a massive success; excursions would commence in the next two years.
MCR once owned 1,182 freight cars. Most of these have been sold since the abandonment of freight service.