NNG - Steam Days in Dunsmuir 
... 60 Years Ago Today
| July 04, 2012 04:48PM |
|
Hi, All -
Sixty years ago this morning I caught my first glimpse of Mount Shasta and the railroad town of Dunsmuir. Looking for a nice place for a two-week family vacation that included some great fishing holes for himself, my dad had brought us there on the advice of a neighbor whose cousin, 'Curly' Luttrell (sp?) had a barber shop less than a block from the depot. I'm sure that many more than one S.P. employee walked up the steep hill from the famous fountain for a haircut at Curly's. There was also a wooden footbridge near the fountain that crossed over the three through tracks that gave crews safe access to the engine yard and roundhouse. As a fledgling ten year old foamite, I had found the paradise so beautifully described by Robert J. Church in his fabulous book 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' - and at about the same time.*
Most of the text in Church's book consists of first-person accounts written by enginemen who worked out of Dunsmuir in the late forties and early fifties, but the best parts - to me, anyway - are the photos and captions added by Bob himself, as they parallel and help to re-kindle my own memories of the final few years of Steam on SP's Shasta Division. As a mere whippersnapper, I dared not descend the steps at the far end of the footbridge where I spent many happy hours watching trains while dad went fishing, so the numerous close-up photos of yard structures and activities are especially welcome. Those taken from near the fountain and from the bridge are especially meaningful; Bob's own June 1955 photo on page 160 perfectly captures my own bittersweet memories of the last days of Steam in Dunsmuir in August that year. I last saw an active cab-forward as it drifted south over the steel bridge at Dog Creek several miles south of Dunsmuir, where my mom and I and three younger siblings had been dropped off at the well-known swimming hole while dad went fishing.** The engine was running light on its way to Redding - hopefully for assignment as a helper on a drag freight headed north, and not quite yet ready to go south for scrapping at Bayshore.
- Roosso
p.s. A fair amount of the enginemen's stories relate to their fishing adventures, so I was a bit surprised that none of them mentioned Ted Fay, the nationally-known fly fisherman who, along with his wife Vivian, ran the Lookout Point Motel about two miles north of town where we stayed for two or three weeks each summer from 1952 through 1959. The motel where our little cabin actually shook as trains passed in the night is long gone, but the northern half of the property is now a city park with a trail down to the small waterfall on Fern Creek, and the view down onto the Railroad in the Canyon with Mount Shasta behind remains a great place to watch trains** - especially early in the morning with a warm cup of cocoa in hand. The painting on the cover of 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' depicts a track-side view at a location along the line just below the stretch visible from Lookout Point.
* See pages 78 and 86-87 of 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' for photos of the footbridge and of the fountain, and pages 122, 134 and 243 for typical photos taken from the footbridge; somewhat surprisingly, no photos from Lookout Point of a train in the canyon with Mount Shasta behind are included in this otherwise wonderful book . . .**
** See third and last photos on [ngdiscussion.net].
Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2018 06:11PM by Russo Loco.
Sixty years ago this morning I caught my first glimpse of Mount Shasta and the railroad town of Dunsmuir. Looking for a nice place for a two-week family vacation that included some great fishing holes for himself, my dad had brought us there on the advice of a neighbor whose cousin, 'Curly' Luttrell (sp?) had a barber shop less than a block from the depot. I'm sure that many more than one S.P. employee walked up the steep hill from the famous fountain for a haircut at Curly's. There was also a wooden footbridge near the fountain that crossed over the three through tracks that gave crews safe access to the engine yard and roundhouse. As a fledgling ten year old foamite, I had found the paradise so beautifully described by Robert J. Church in his fabulous book 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' - and at about the same time.*
Most of the text in Church's book consists of first-person accounts written by enginemen who worked out of Dunsmuir in the late forties and early fifties, but the best parts - to me, anyway - are the photos and captions added by Bob himself, as they parallel and help to re-kindle my own memories of the final few years of Steam on SP's Shasta Division. As a mere whippersnapper, I dared not descend the steps at the far end of the footbridge where I spent many happy hours watching trains while dad went fishing, so the numerous close-up photos of yard structures and activities are especially welcome. Those taken from near the fountain and from the bridge are especially meaningful; Bob's own June 1955 photo on page 160 perfectly captures my own bittersweet memories of the last days of Steam in Dunsmuir in August that year. I last saw an active cab-forward as it drifted south over the steel bridge at Dog Creek several miles south of Dunsmuir, where my mom and I and three younger siblings had been dropped off at the well-known swimming hole while dad went fishing.** The engine was running light on its way to Redding - hopefully for assignment as a helper on a drag freight headed north, and not quite yet ready to go south for scrapping at Bayshore.
- Roosso
p.s. A fair amount of the enginemen's stories relate to their fishing adventures, so I was a bit surprised that none of them mentioned Ted Fay, the nationally-known fly fisherman who, along with his wife Vivian, ran the Lookout Point Motel about two miles north of town where we stayed for two or three weeks each summer from 1952 through 1959. The motel where our little cabin actually shook as trains passed in the night is long gone, but the northern half of the property is now a city park with a trail down to the small waterfall on Fern Creek, and the view down onto the Railroad in the Canyon with Mount Shasta behind remains a great place to watch trains** - especially early in the morning with a warm cup of cocoa in hand. The painting on the cover of 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' depicts a track-side view at a location along the line just below the stretch visible from Lookout Point.
* See pages 78 and 86-87 of 'Steam Days in Dunsmuir' for photos of the footbridge and of the fountain, and pages 122, 134 and 243 for typical photos taken from the footbridge; somewhat surprisingly, no photos from Lookout Point of a train in the canyon with Mount Shasta behind are included in this otherwise wonderful book . . .**
** See third and last photos on [ngdiscussion.net].
Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2018 06:11PM by Russo Loco.
| Subject | Author | Posted |
|---|---|---|
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Russo Loco | July 04, 2012 04:48PM |
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flutterbug | July 04, 2012 05:18PM |
|
Greg Scholl | July 04, 2012 07:03PM |
|
Russo Loco | July 04, 2012 07:57PM |
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488 stops for water at Los Pinos tank on closing day Oct. 1979. Photo courtesy Don Richter
The NGDF was started by Don Richter and is currently operated in his memory by Nathan Holmes and others. Others who have contributed to the upkeep of this board are (in no particular order): Charles McCandless, Everett Lueck, Ted Wilton, Cole Adams, James Bane, John Moellmer, Jon Bentz, Linn Moedinger, lloyd lehrer, Rod Jensen, John Craft, Steven Forney, Herb Kelsey, Bill Ramaley, Russ Sperry (El Russo Loco), Josh McNeal, John West, Jim Armstrong, Bob Bergstrom, Greg Scholl, Blake Forbes Doug van Veelen and Mark Fuller.