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McCloud Caboose # 101

In Dunsmuir, I stayed in two different cabooses at the Railroad Park Resort. These cabooses had last seen service as the conductor’s mobile office over 40 years ago.

They now served a purpose in which their builders had never envisioned. A hotel room on wheels with bed, bath, and television.

When I wandered into the yard of the defunct McCloud Railroad, I was excited to see two working cabooses. These where not the repainted and refurbished cabooses that can be seen throughout the land as part of restaurants, static displays, or hotel rooms. These cabooses were the workhorses of the McCloud Railroad. They may not look sexy in their peeling paint and their faded logos but they are the real deal.

McCloud cabooses number 101 and 102 are steel custom International wide-vision types, especially built short for the railroad in 1962.

The caboose is at the end of a freight train just as they are at the end of their own railroad journey.

Seeing these rusted and damaged cabooses (101 was damaged in a yard accident in 1997) proved to be a strong metaphor for the end of the McCloud Railroad and by extension, most smaller railroads across the nation.

The McCloud yard, in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, is now a quiet and static place. No more are heard the sounds of the steam whistle, or the deep boom of a diesel. No more are heard the screech of freight cars over rails and the smell of hot brake pads.

But I returned again to look at the two remaining cabooses. A former shell of their working life. The McCloud River Railroad logo, fading away, to eventually match the rusty-orange of the caboose.

Number 102 was sitting by itself to right of the shop building next to a snow spreader 1850 “Wing and a Prayer”. I walked across the yard to the tracks that veered off to the right, which I assume lead to the east towards Bartle and the junction to Burney.

On this track was a strange consist of passenger cars that now sport a coat of graffiti and most of their windows had been smashed in. Sandwiched between these cars were a hopper car and a crane car. At the end of this motley collection of cars was McCloud River Railroad Caboose #101. The caboose was coupled to the last passenger car, as if ready for the train to leave the yard on rails that abruptly turned to red, volcanic dirt.

The McCloud logo was designed by school children. It was adopted as the companies logo just as the railroad headed into the diesel era.
Caboose # 102 sitting in the McCloud yard. This caboose was used much later that # 101 and bears the name McCloud Railway.
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Mt. Shasta

Mt. Shasta dominates the landscape for miles around.

When you are on Highway 5 in Northern California. Mt. Shasta is a beacon. This perpetual snow covered mountain has a long geologic and human history. In the Native Karuk language they named this mountain “White Mountain”.

At 14,162 feet Mt. Shasta is the tallest mountain in this part of the southern Cascade Range.

Because Mt. Shasta seems always to be within eyesight, when in this part of the Golden State, it seemed that I had to sketch it. The tough decision was from what of the infinite perspectives would I sketch the mountain.

I drove around Shasta City and there were many great perspectives but some marred by buildings or power lines so I headed out to the sticks: Lake Siskiyou.

I found some good views from the shoreline but they would have been better it I was on a boat in the middle of the lake or on that far shoreline if I could only figure out how to get there.

I didn’t find what I was looking for so I continued on driving around the lake, which is really a reservoir made by damming the Sacramento River. I thought the road I was on was going to circle around the lake but at one point it started to head away from Lake Siskiyou. I pulled over and I looked back from where I came and I realized that I had found my sketching perspective! Behind me, Shasta rose above the forested, foreground hills.

I pulled out my sketching stool and gear and had a pleasant encounter sketching Shasta by the side of the road with the two ravens and the stream beside as my companions.

The logo for the McCloud River Railroad was designed by school children in a contest. It features a bear balanced on a log with a fish. And behind is the ever present Mt. Shasta.
Mt. Shasta in the background and the McCloud Railroad in the foreground. This is near the point where the railroad joins the Union Pacific mainline in the appropriately named Shasta City.
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Santa Fe Caboose # 28

I wanted to add another night to stay at the Railroad Park Resort in Dunsmuir but the SP Caboose # 17 was booked, so I booked one of the popular Santa Fe cabooses.

I spent my last night at the Resort in Caboose # 28 a former Santa Fe cupola caboose.

This CE-2 caboose was built by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway in 1942. It was rebuilt in 1970 and renumbered as ATSF 999448. It came to the resort in the late 1980’s.

A caboose is a uniquely bit of United States railroading. At one time all freight trains had a caboose (usually red) at the end of each train. A caboose came at the time when train crews were larger than they are today, during the age of steam. Each locomotive had an engineer and fireman but the conductor was in charge of the train. The conductor’s office was on rails, this was the caboose.

From the caboose, the conductor could throw switches, aid in backing up, check the train for safety, and fill out paperwork. From the view in the cupola, or later the bay window, he could oversee the train to make sure no loads were shifting on freight cars. He could also monitor the train for overheated axels called “hot boxes”.

Most cabooses where fitted with a desk, bathroom, bed, and storage closets. It really was a home-office on wheels, reflecting the long work days and may miles on the railroad.

Laws where in place that all freight train had to contain a caboose for safety reasons. This changed as technology improved and railroad cuts made more with smaller crews. The new, modern diesel-electric engines had larger cabs which means that the conductor could ride up front.

The technology railroads use to replace cabooses are called an end-of-train device. These devices are fitted to the last car of a freight train and monitors air brake pressure and over heated axels. There is also a blinking safely light that warns other trains behind..

By the early 1980’s, laws were changing that no longer required trains to have cabooses. By the mid-1980’s most freight trains no longer ended with a caboose. The era of the red, cupolaed caboose was over.

Whenever I watch a long freight train pass by, I hopefully expect to find a caboose at the end of the train. This comes from seeing so many cabooses on freight trains when I was a young rail fan. In my mind, some how, the blinking, oblong box at the end of a train will never really replace a caboose

This 1972 built Southern Pacific bay window caboose, #1886, was one of the last cabooses in service on the railroad. It was last in service on November 15, 1995 on Southern Pacific’s Lompoc White Hills branch line. I was told the reason for this was that there was a part of the line where the train had to back over a road crossing and the caboose was required for safety reasons. It is now restored and on exhibit at the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum.
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Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir is a train town.

At one time it was a company town for the Southern Pacific Railroad when 3,000 of it’s citizen’s where employed by Southern Pacific Railroad.

Dunsmuir was previously known as Pusher because this is where helper locomotives where either added or taken off trains. They were put on to make it up the Cantara Loop and the climb out of Dunsmuir as the line headed north. Helpers where also used on downslope freight trains to help with dynamic braking.

The town contains a railyard, shops, and a still functioning turntable to turn locomotives around. In it’s heyday, Dunsmuir had a population of 5,000, many of those working for the railroad, serving the labor intensive steam locomotives. When the stream locomotives were replaced by more efficient disel-electric locomotives, the town’s population was almost halved.

Today, the mainline sees two passenger trains and about 15 freight train daily. Most freight trains are now powered by three to four, 4,000 to 6,000 horsepower, diesel-electic engines, so the need to add engines has become obsolete.

Dunsmuir still feels very much like a train town even though Southern Pacific was aquired by Union Pacific in 1996.

The main street, Dunsmuir Avenue, is beautiful in it’s small town charm. And of course the main street parallels the main line.

The crown jewel of downtown Dunsmuir is the California Theatre. This 800 seat movie palace was opened in 1926. The theater featured a stage and a Wurlitzer pipe organ. The theater is only one block from the passenger station and, in it’s heyday, many of Hollywood’s finest and other dignataries visited the theater including Babe Ruth, the Marx Brothers, and Clark Gable.

In recent times the theater has faced some troubling times, after many stops and starts the theater closed in 2016. There was also a Masonic Lodge that met in the building for close to 70 years.

I parked on Dunsmuir Avenue and did a car sketch (great for social distancing) of the the epic sign and marque. I added a bit of artistic license when I added perhaps the best movie ever made featuring a locomotive, Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General (1926).

Across from the station is a mural on an oil tank. The mural was created by rail historian, artist, author, and former employee of the Southern Pacific and McCloud Railroad, John Signor. This is a sketch I did from my photograph. It features a Southern Pacific EMD SD45 T-2R diesel-electric locomotive and the famous Daylight GS-4, 4449. This mural represented the future and the past of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It is also a reminder of the name of the railroad that built Dunsmuir.
Only two passages trains stop at Dunsmuir Station. The north and southbound Coast Starlight, an Amtrak service from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles, California. To catch the Coast Starlight at Dunsmuir, you have to get up very early in the morning (or simply just stay up). The southbound Train 11 arrives in Dunsmuir at 12:35 AM and northbound Train 14 arrives at 4:56 AM!
Dunsmuir is an important division point in the Shasta Division where train crews change over. In this case, a BNSF freight train with a consist of hopper cars, change it’s engineer and conductor. BNSF is granted trackage rights to use this route by the tracks owner: Union Pacific.

Note: Part of sketching, and life I might add, is making mistakes and with this sketch I made one. I am a native Californian and I made unforgivable mistake of misspelling my own state! That sometimes happens when you are so focused on form and not spelling. I added the missing “I” on the street below.

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Railroad Park Resort: Caboose # 17

Who doesn’t want to spend the night in a caboose? It ignites the inner child in almost everyone!

I stayed in a Southern Pacific cupola caboose No. 17 (SP # 1047). This caboose is a class C-40-1 and it was built in 1937 (one of 50 that were built). The caboose arrived at the Railroad Park Resort in the early 1970’s when the interior was remodeled.

This caboose had everything you could ask for in a modern hotel room. The specs of Caboose #17 are: a king sized bed, full bath, refrigerator, microwave, tv (featuring the Resort’s own channel!), an air conditioner (very important on chilly mornings!), and table and chairs. What most hotel rooms lack is a cupola!

The view from the cupola is probably the best out of any of the cabooses at the resort. When looking to the southwest, the rugged peaks of Castle Crags catch the early morning sun.

I put my bags in the caboose, grabbed by sketching bag and chair, and picked my spot to sketch Caboose #17. To the left of the caboose was a sign that proclaimed like a proud exclamation mark: “MOTEL!” with an arrow that shot out of the “L“, pointing to the red caboose as if to proclaim to the unbeliever that, “Yes, you can stay in this caboose!”

A nice way to spend the chilly mornings was to sit in the cupola, with warm coffee, my sketch book and pens. This is s a cupola view of Caboose No. 17. In this view are three other cabooses at the Resort.
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Railroad Park Resort, Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir is a railroad town and what better place to spend the night in Dunsmuir than a caboose?

The resort was first envisioned as a railway museum with a collection of rolling sock. The museum idea fell through. In 1968, the original owners, Bill and Delberta Murphy opened the Railroad Park Resort as a railroad-themed hotel with accommodations being in cabooses.

The resort now has 28 different cabooses to stay in and is a rail fan’s paradise. One prominent feature is the 1927 Willamette three-truck Shay logging locomotive on static display. There are only six of these Willamette locomotives in existence.The Shay rests besides a wooden water tower.

The resort also features a restaurant that is housed in three passenger coaches. Dining was closed due to the pandemic but was open for take out with caboose-delivery. I was treated with a tasty ravioli and a Caesar salad.

To represent the Railroad Park Resort in my journal I decided to paint the Shay and the water tower near the entrance to the park (featured sketch). For this approach I pulled up a sketching chair near the soothing water fountain and I decided to block in the shapes of the locomotive and water tower in loose, broad paint strokes. I was not so concerned with fitting the entire locomotive on the page, nor was I interested in rendering every detail. This is the sort of painting that if a bystander where to look over my shoulder, would think I have the artistic talent of a brown trout. But out this spattered chaos, you slowly form the image with pen work, once the paint has dried.

The challenge of drawing a Shay is the complexities of it gears. It you look at it as a whole it is daunting but if you break it down to small, manageable shapes, it is doable.

My caboose for two nights and the epic Castle Crags in the background. (This caboose will feature in a different post).
The water tender of the three truck Shay with the water tower in the background.
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The McCloud River Railroad and the Bartle Water Tower

I headed north out of my caboose digs in Dunsmuir to Highway 88 and the town of McCloud.

McCloud was the epicenter for the logging railroad, the McLoud River Railroad (later to become the McCloud Railroad). Much of the ninety miles of track has now been removed and the railroad bed is slowly being converted into a hiking and biking trail called the Great Shasta Rail Trail.

I wanted to get out on the trail and to see what was left of the railroad; quite a bit as I was soon to find out. One section of the trail that I wanted to visit was east of McCloud near the small collection of buildings at Bartle.

It was here that there was once a 25,000 gallon water tower built in 1933. This tower served as a watering stop for the McCloud’s steam locomotives. The water tower was filmed in a beautiful crane shot in the 1986 film, Stand By Me. In the scene, the four boys are walking east down the railroad and the leaky Bartle water tower is on the left.

The film’s director, Rob Reiner, called this shot “one of my favorites in the whole film.”

Still from Stand By Me (1986) with the water tank at Bartle. The red volcanic rock ballast of the rail bed says, “McCloud River Railroad”.

In 2020, the large water tower is gone, it collapsed in July of 2011. Half of the stand that the tower stood on is still by the side of the former railroad bed. I pulled out my sketching stool and stretched what was left of the tower.

This is all that is left of the 25,000 gallon Bartle Water Tower. The railbed is graded in distinctive red volcanic rock of the McCloud Railroad.

After sketching the remains of the Bartle Water Tower, I headed back along Highway 88 to McCloud. I wanted to see what was left of the McCloud Railroad. The company had abandoned most of it’s tracks by 2006. I had a vague idea that the rail yard was in the northern part of town.

After a search, I came upon a railroad grade crossing. I pulled over and hiked up the tracks and I was unprepared for what I was about to discover.

This was any rail fans’s dream: having an abandoned rail yard all to yourself!

This was the only engine that I was able to find in the McCloud yard. A Baldwin S-12 that the railroad bought new in 1953. It was numbered 30 but now bears the number 203 because it was sold to a railroad in Washington State. It also worked in Pittsburg, Ca at the U.S. Steel Plant before returning to it’s original home in McCloud.
Spare rail car wheels in the foreground and freight cars in the background. The 1957 shop building is to the right.
This is one of two short length cabooses that was purchased new by the railroad in 1962. Both cabooses numbers 101 and 102 are still in the abandoned railroad yard. I believe this is the caboose that is featured in the famous Lake Britton Bridge scene in Stand By Me.
There are still rails left on the McCloud Railroad. This is the set of tracks in Shasta City as it joins the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) mainline. This is either the beginning or the end of the McCloud River Railroad. Rail still exist from here to McCloud. This section of the track was used by the now defunct Shasta Sunset Dinner Train. There are future plans to use this track for car storage.

A special thanks to railroad author Jeff Moore who helped give me information about the past and present of the McCloud Railroads. I highly recommend his Acadia Publishing book Rails Around McCloud. His website about the McCloud is: http://mccloudriverrailroad.com/index.htm

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Johnson’s Ranch

It was long after dark when we got to Johnson’s Ranch, so the first time I saw it was early in the morning. The weather was fine, the ground was covered with green grass, the birds were singing from the tops of trees, and the journey was over. I could scarcely believe that I was alive.

The scene I saw that morning seems to be photographed on my mind. Most of the incidents are gone from memory, but I can always see the camp near Johnson’s Ranch.

~John Breen, April 24, 1847

John Breen wrote this letter once he had crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains into the foothills of California as a member of the emigrant group now known as the Donner Party.

Out of the 87 members of this doomed party only 48 survived. Most of the 48 survivors where women and children. Breen and his family were lucky. All of their family members survived.

It is unclear where Breen wrote this well known letter but is was either at Sutter’s Fort (in present day Sacramento) or at Johnson’s Ranch (near Wheatland).

Johnson’s Ranch was the first settlement the emigrants encounter once they entered California on the California Trail. They often paused here after the grueling passage over Donner Summit before heading down to Sutter’s Fort in present day Sacramento. They would camp near the banks of the Bear River.

Once the Breens came into California at Johnson’s Ranch and then Sutter’s Fort, they relocated to the mission town of San Juan Bautista.

Johnson’s Ranch was a Mexican Land Grant that eventually ended up in the hands of Willian Johnson. In 1846 be built a humble adobe house that became known as Johnson’s Rancho.

During the winter of 1847, the seven surviving members of the Forlorn Hope staggered into Johnson’s Ranch. They were a party that set out from Truckee Lake in order to get help for the ill fated Donner Party. The party got lost and of the 17, only seven made it to the ranch. The survivors that made it to included it’s leader William Eddy, and sisters Sarah Fosdick, and Mary Ann Graves.

All of the relief parties that took the remaining survivors from the Lake and Alder Creek Camps back into California, staged and departed from Johnson’s Ranch.

Today the town of Wheatland is near the location of the ranch. Nothing remains of the original ranch. Just California Registered Historical Landmark No. 493. The plaque sits in the town’s park near the railroad tracks. It reads:

The first settlement reached in California by emigrant trains using the Emigrant (‘Donner’) Trail, this was an original part of the 1844 Don Pablo Gutiérrez land grant. It was sold at auction to William Johnson in 1845, and in 1849 part of the ranch was set aside as a government reserve-Camp Far West. In 1866, the town of Wheatland was laid out on a portion of the grant.

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Little Libraries

One benefit of sheltering in pace and the global pandemic is that it has forced me to walk around my neighborhood (for sanity’s sake).

When you get out in the neighborhood you start to notice details you haven’t seen before. You noticed the little details of houses that before seemed all the same. Details are the route newly noticed.

One thing that I have noticed on my walks of San Francisco’s Outer Sunset District is the proliferation of little boxes on wooden poles. These are the little libraries.

The box on top of the pole contains one or two selves lined with books. These boxes are used to take a book or leave a book and they are all free. It seems odd in a city there is actually something free! Well not exactly free. I donated three books:

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson (Good but not as good as Notes From a Small Island.)

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

The nonprofit company behind these boxes is Little Free Library, a Wisconsin based company that inspired 100,000 boxes (and counting) in 100 countries (and counting).

People can either build their own library of have one pre-made. Once it is installed, usually in the front yard, facing the sidewalk, the library is registered and added to a map so reading in the community know where to find a Little Free Library.

Here’s a two story version on Judah street in front of the St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church and the Far Out West Dune Community Garden.

This Little Free Library is a few blocks from Ocean Beach and is topped with succulents and bejeweled with sand dollars. Each of the boxes are as uniques as their owners.