Re: Another day on the Madera Sugar Pine Grades COVID-19 edition

Continuing our exploration:

The "spur" hugged the hillside above the incline grade. Here's a view looking down towards the grade of the incline and the modern road beyond:


Here's another view looking downgrade on the "spur" from the same location:


I followed the "spur" until the tree fall was so thick I had to cut down to the road to follow the grade:

You can see the modern road in the distance. The incline trestle was off to the right side of the photo.

I hiked back down the road while following the trace of the spur's grade. It quickly became clear that the "spur" intercepted the modern road. Here's a view at the junction looking up towards the "spur":



And here is the view from the same vantage point looking down the modern road towards the base of the incline:

The trestle location was on the right side of the photo and ended at the far curve to the left in the modern forest access road.

It appears that the "spur" is actually the relocated incline grade around the trestle site. For some reason Madera Sugar Pine abandoned the trestle it had built on the incline (destroyed by fire?), and built a new line on the hillside around the trestle's location. By using vertical rollers next to the track they were able to negotiate the curves with their incline cable.

The other option would be the original incline grade was turned into the access road. That seems unlikely since there are artifacts on the incline grade and the grade skirting the trestle site is the same width as the railroad grades and not the width of a road.

In my next post I'll provide maps of all of the trackage I discovered.

To be continued...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2020 09:23AM by Dave Peterson.