McCloud Railway
(MCR)
Most of these photos were taken in the mid 1990s when I lived in Mt. Shasta, California. My apartment was about half a mile from the McCloud's line as it entered/left the town of Mt. Shasta, and I used to love hearing the naturally aspirated locomotives with their staccato exhaust rhythm as they pulled their train up the grade out of town. I wish my photo skills were better back then in the film camera days.
The history of the McCloud River Railroad/McCloud Railway is a long one, and it saddens me that they ended up becoming just another fallen flag with the closure and abandonment of the railroad. The dinner trains and occasional steam excursions were not enough to keep the company afloat after most all the mills had closed, leaving too little traffic to keep the line open.
The last customers on the line were Sprint Reload in McCloud, where boxcar loads of paper were warehoused and transferred to trucks for delivery at a large publishing company in Reno, Nevada, and a diatomaceous earth mine, Dicalite Corporation, which had a reloading facility on a siding at Cayton (map location). With the closure of the McCloud Railway, Dicalite Corporation began transporting the material to a new reload on the BNSF at Nubieber, California (map location), some 40 miles to the southeast of their plant.
Visit mccloudriverrailroad.com for Jeff Moore's excellent history and photographs of the McCloud Railroad.
Steam Excursions
From time to time, the railroad hosted steam excursions. In 1994, the Blue Goose (Yreka Western Railroad's number 19, which was formerly McCloud's 19) was ferried to Mt. Shasta from Montague in consist in a Southern Pacific freight train, under steam but not providing any motive power, and spent a weekend working on the McCloud, pulling an excursion train for Trains Unlimited Tours.
19 at Black Butte on the Southern Pacific en route to Mt. Shasta City
Map location
#19 arriving in Mt. Shasta in a Southern Pacific train consist
Map location
In 1997, locomotive 25 had been refurbished and also ran several excursion trains out of Mt. Shasta.
McCloud #25 waiting for passengers to load in Mt. Shasta, California
Map location
Detail shot of 25's air compressor
East of Mt. Shasta
Map location
Freight: Mt. Shasta, CA
Caboose 108 tagged onto the end of a train about to leave Mt. Shasta's SP interchange yard for McCloud
Map location
April 1996 in Mt. Shasta, SD38 number 37 is in need of a new coat of paint.
Map location
McCloud 39 and 37 switch t the then-Southern Pacific interchange yard at Mt. Shasta before taking a trip over the hill to McCloud.
Map location
Heading up the hill from Mt. Shasta, March, 1997, with Mt. Eddy in the distance.
Map location
End of the train shown above.
(As an interesting aside, trains would back down the grade into town caboose-first, having left McCloud engines first and switched directions at the switchback at Signal Butte between McCloud and Mt. Shasta. Likewise, they would leave Mt. Shasta locomotives first and end up in McCloud caboose first.)
Switchback map location
Crossing Everitt Memorial Highway
Map location
McCloud, CA
MCR caboose decorated for Christmas at the passenger depot in McCloud
Map location
MCR 38 rests at McCloud's snowed over yard in McCloud
Map location
Cabeese in the snow in McCloud with Mt. Shasta as a backdrop
Map location
McCloud yard scene
Approximate map location
Dinner Train, Bartle, CA
MCR 37 pulls a dinner train eastward at Kinyon
Map location
Eastbound MCR 37 tops a rise a mile or so west of Bartle with a dinner train in tow.
Map location
Crossing Harris Springs Road at Bartle
Map location
Dinner train at Bartle. Sorry for my lack of photographic skill.
The tank at Bartle
Map location
Pondosa Branch
The Pondosa branch used to serve a sawmill at Pondosa, California (map location). After the mill closed, part of the Pondosa branch was removed in the 1980's and what was left was used to store per diem McCloud River Railroad boxcars (see Jeff Moore's website mentioned at the top of this page to read about the "Itel era"). Eventually, the cars were removed and the bridge that crossed Highway 89 was as well.
These photos show all that remained of the Pondosa branch near the end of the McCloud Railway's history.
Map location, looking south
Looking south where the bridge used to cross Highway 89, just beyond the stack of crossties.
Approximate map location
Hambone Branch to Lookout Junction
The Hambone branch began at a wye just east of Bartle at a location called "Santa Claus." The south leg of the wye lead to Burney, CA, and the north leg headed through the wilderness through a place called Hambone to eventually meet the BNSF at Lookout Junction. The line from Hambone to Lookout Junction was owned by the BNSF, but a maintenence agreement with the McCloud Railroad allowed McCloud's trains access to Lookout Junction. In 2008, the tracks came up as part of the abandonment of the McCloud Railway.
The view from where I got my Jeep stuck the day I was out taking pics of the abandonment process
Approximate map location
Spur 256
Approximate map location
West switch of balloon track at Lookout Junction
Approximate map location
Lookout Jct. looking south
Map location
Next: Modoc Northern Railroad
