Re: Mystery Railroad

Greetings:

How about the Iron Mountain Railway (near Redding, Calif)....

I refer to The Western Railroader, No. 288 (January, 1964), Vol. 27, No. 1. There is also a "chapter" about the line in Rails in the Shadow of Mt. Shasta, by John Signor.

Here are the reasons I suggest this location:

1. There appears to be a loop in Dave's photos. These were uncommon on western narrow gauge railroads, but the Iron Mountain line had a loop....

2. The terrain is much like the area around Redding, Calif.: dry, rocky, sparce vegetation, etc.

3. The Iron Mountain had several 0-4-4T Porter locos.

4. On page eight of the Western Railroader article there is a photo of No. 5, which seems much like the one in Dave's photo. While it is the engineer's side of the loco, it even has the small door below the front window in the side of the cab as seen in Dave's photo.

In Dave's photo, the loco has only one sand dome, but it is in the same place as the rear dome on No. 5 in Western Railroader. The bell seems to be in the same place in both photo.

The stack in Dave's photo is different than No. 5 in the WR, but on page four is a photo of other Iron Mountain locos with that same stack.

A couple of other observations.... Dave's two photos were not taken at the same time. Note that the cars are different. The first photo shows cars with the release mechanisms on the same side, and in the second photo two cars are reversed from the other photo.

The ore cars in Dave's photos are different from those in the WR article (page seven).

Tom Armstrong