Tim...
Here's an item I wrote several years ago, as part of my stuff for a book which I might someday get published:
THE CAMINO, CABLE & NORTHERN (item #10)
Harold Wilmunder had a loop of track around his little ranch at Antelope, California,
near Roseville, north of Sacramento. He had collected some railroad equipment: a Porter
0-4-0 from a brick manufacturer in the area, a 2-6-0 from Guatemala, a San Francisco
cable car, and a couple of cars from the Westside Lumber Company in Tuolumne. Harold
also had found a theater organ, which he set up in his house. My impression, when I went
there the first time, was that his wife didn’t like any of the above.
I was building a live-steam model locomotive in the machine shop at Stanford. I was a
young assistant professor there, in the Design Division of the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, and had been put in charge of the shop. It was part of my assignment as the
instructor of the manufacturing processes course, about which I knew virtually nothing.
My notion was that I should learn to run a lathe, milling machine, drill press, and the other
tools in the shop. Building a live-steam locomotive seemed to be an ideal way to
accomplish this. It was. During that process, I came to the conclusion that a designer of
machinery should never send out drawings of parts that he couldn’t make himself. I still
believe that, very strongly.
The shop was on a campus street, and had large windows. As the model took shape, it
could be seen by anyone on the sidewalk. Alan Wilmunder, Harold’s brother, who was
employed at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), noticed the model, looked me
up, and invited me to a steam-up at Harold’s ranch. (I should have declined, but didn’t.)
I was fascinated by Harold’s projects. I was already a devoted railfan. The notion of
preserving and restoring narrow-gauge steam locomotives was magnificent in my opinion.
I was hooked.
The Michigan-California Lumber Company had its office at Camino, a little town about
fifteen miles east of Placerville. For years, when you drove through Camino on highway
50, on your way to go skiing at Lake Tahoe, you got to see the locomotives that the
company no longer had in service. Cliff Grandt built at least one model of a
Michigan-California 0-4-0 saddle tanker, that he showed at the Oakland Society of Model
Engineers layout in Hayward. I asked my parents if I could buy one, but they wouldn’t go
for such an outrageous scheme. They said, correctly, that there just wasn’t room in our
yard in Lafayette to have a locomotive. It’s difficult, when you’re a teen-ager, to get
grand notions across to your parents.
Harold negotiated a lease of the Michigan-California right-of-way, from highway 50 to
Cable Point. I have no idea of how he accomplished this. I suppose that the company had
no use for the property, at all, and was willing to make a few dollars from some shithead
who wanted to play with his trains there.
Now, you have to understand that the logging railroad of the Michigan-California
Lumber Company was not at all ordinary. It really had two parts, separated by the gorge
of the American River, about ten miles north of Camino. The gorge was spanned by a
cable tramway, on which loaded log cars were carried. The cable, some pieces of which
were still lying around when I was first there, was about two inches in diameter. The
external strands were rectangular, not round, so that the cable was actually quite smooth,
to accomodate the rollers that carried the cars. You can read all about it, in my dear
friend’s, Professor Steve Polkinghorn, book, “Pino Grande”.
We started laying track in early 1967 (?). I did surveying, because I wanted to learn how
to do railroad surveying. (The track location was obvious from the roadbed.) I also did
some of the physical labor; as little as possible.
One weekend of volunteer work, I took Ingrid. We set up camp about a half mile down
from the first road crossing, in the woods there. Apparently, some teen-agers found our
camp, and stole our sleeping bags. So, we went to a motel in Placerville. It was there that
our first child was conceived.
Ingrid and I bought a 27 acre ranch, out along the railroad right-of-way near Cable Road,
with the help of my parents. We had many very pleasant weekends there, frequently with
my parents, and had a nice visit from her parents from Germany. The ranch had a small
stream running down through the middle of the meadow, an apple orchard on the hillside,
and was surrounded by National Forest Land. We enjoyed it very much. We were both
teaching, and had summers off. So, we had lots of time to spend there, with our children
and animals. We leased out grazing rights to horse owners, and raised some animals
ourselves. (“Hamburger” and “Beefsteak” were their names.)
The little railroad didn’t get very far. At the end, there was about a mile of track,
reaching the shop site. (We had built the shop out of parts from “temporary buildings” on
the Stanford campus, which had then been there for fifty years, since W.W.II, and which I
had stupidly agreed to remove at no cost, providing that we could have the parts.) But,
we had built a fairly respectable shop building, with two tracks for locomotives..
The lumber company was purchased by a Japanese firm a couple years later. They didn’t
understand, or care about, the value of a little tourist railroad to the community. (Camino,
at an elevation of about 3000 feet, is an ideal place for apples. It has an annual “Apple
Festival”, and the steam train was an attractive part of that.) Harold’s lease was canceled.
Fortunately, Harold owned the property on which the shop was located. He moved the
locomotive (the Porter 2-6-0) there, along with a Shay he had gotten from the Westside. I
have no idea of what has happened to the locomotives since then. I doubt they have been
scrapped.
Bob Keller
3-28-00, abc
