Charles:
That is the late Henry Sorensen's engine which he kept in an engine house on his ranch in McKinleyville, CA. The engine actually was owned by Eric Thomsen, a 15' gauge railroad builder, who bought it before WWII from the woman who owned the property on which it was located. After Henry got out of the Army after WWII (he was a supervisor in the US railroad battalion that ran trains in France after D-Day), he bought the engine from Eric for one dollar, "as is, where is". It was never really lost. There are photos of Eric climbing on the engine back around 1940, before the Mattole River flooded and partially buried the loco.
I got to know Henry back in 1964 when he treated my wife and me to a hour long slide show in his living room about just how he dug out the engine by hand, then built a hand operated winch from local trees near the site, and winched it up onto his flatbed truck. A great story. We became good friends.
He also had imported a Kiso Forest steam engine from Japan (the loco was built by Baldwin) only to find when it arrived in the States that it was 30" gauge, not 36". So he widened the engine's gauge to 36" in his shops on the ranch. He eventually had a mile or two of 36" gauge railroad on his 40 acre ranch with sidings, etc.
The last time he ran the two engines was in 1994 when he was interviewed for the video "Logging the North Coast" produced by Catenary Productions (Don Olsen). I was there by invitation and got a number of photos of Henry at the throttle of the Mattole engine in motion. I gave one large print of my best photo to Henry and he had it framed and hung on the wall of his living room.
His ranch once was way out in the country north of Eureka, CA. By 1994, it was surrounded on three sides by houses and condos. Across the street, the local high school had been built. When we started running the two engines, people almost literally came out of the woodwork. It was supposed to be a private affair but people even came up Henry's driveway to the engine house out back without invitation or anything else. One "clown" even got onto the coach in the picture when it was running behind Henry and his engine. The clown was summarily removed from the car and from the fenced property.
Henry's wife Myrna told me afterwards that the insurance premium for one day of operating his two engines cost $1,000. They never ran again.
Myrna passed away several years ago and Henry over a year ago. They were in their 80s.
As he got older, Henry donated the two engines to the Calif. State RR Museum in Sacramento. He also had some West Side Lumber Co rolling stock which he also donated. The coach in the Popular Mechanics photo was and is a Carter Bros. product (Newark, CA) of the 1890s. It originally ran on the nearby 45 1/4 inch gauge "Arcata & Mad River RR". When that line was standard gauged just before WWII, the coach was detrucked, placed on a standard gauge flatcar, and used on a local logging line as a caboose. The cupola was added at that time. When the logging line was abandoned, Henry bought the coach.
Henry donated the coach to the Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources ("SPCRR") at the Ardenwood Historic Farm in Newark, CA, where it is now. ["SPCRR" are the initials of the South Pacific Coast RR, a 19th century 3' ng line that ran from Alameda CA,through the Ardenwood Farm, to Santa Cruz. The Society preserves the history of that RR and quite a number of ng cars, a lot of which are restored. They do their own museum quality restoration work and do it very well. Their website is: [
www.spcrr.org]
There's an extraordinary amount of stories and accomplishments in Henry's life but it would take a book to tell even part of it!
Best regards, Hart Corbett
_______________________________________
Charles McMillan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is an article about a little engine found in
> the woods and restored .
>
> [
books.google.com]
> A146&lpg=PA146&dq=Mattole+%23+1+locomotive&source=
> bl&ots=ikcheDXRh5&sig=ZA33J8TgXOmR_2E3__hXGBxHgZ0&
> hl=en&ei=mq78SprhH4SHnQeiwO3-Bg&sa=X&oi=book_resul
> t&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CB8Q6AEwCQ
>
> It was written up in Popular Mechanics in the
> early 60's . It was rescued from a stream bed and
> restored . Mattole # 1 0-4-2 tank.
>
> Charles McMillan
