Re: Sumpter Freight

There definitley is talk back channel about the need for a new book, but when and what seems to be illusive. Several members have photo collections and material that need to be copied and compiled that would add quite a bit to what is in "Rails Sagebrush and Pine". In the early days 1910 to late 20's the RR evidently hauled quite a bit of freight to Prarrie. Bob Bergstrom has written a wonderful article that appeared in the "Stump Dodger" a while back on pass. traffic to Prarrie. It mentions that the daily routine for an Austin based loco crew was to take freight delivered from Baker on the previous days frieght that ran just to Austin and Bates, to Prarrie in the Morn. over mile high Dixie Mtn., cut off the freight cars, couple up to the pass consist in Prarrie take it back over the Mtn. to Austin to meet the daily pass. train from Baker. The locos would exchange consists and the Austin based crew would make trip #3 over Dixie to deliver pass. Then the Austin based crew would couple onto empty freight cars that it had delivered in the morn. returning over Dixie for the 4th time to Austin. Hope I didn't mangle this to much Bob. Tipton was the jumping off place for another mining boom area called Greenhorn. Tipton had it's own depot and a pop. of 200 or so. In the mining boom years there may have been quite a bit of mixed freight to this location. Besides the finished lbr. mentioned in the earlier posts, the RR throughout it's years of operation was hauling logs from the several connections with logging branches to the OLC mill in South Baker. It's my impression that this was not the only mill that logs were hauled into. It may be in Farrell's book that mentions a little trouble the RR got into over haulage rates for logs being hauled for other companies besides the OLC the SVRy's sister co. Apparently in the early days their books weren't kept seperatly untill the PUC or maybe ICC folkes made a fuss. Some of the old pictures you see show gondolas of chip or hog fuel being hauled to Baker. As I understand it there was a hog fueled power plant at Baker so mill waste from Bates or perhaps Whitney was hauled. The RR evidently was't shut down for snow as they used a large V plow with 5 or so locos pushing to keep things open. I have not seen a picture of the mallets pushing the plow, so I wonder if in the last yaears if they were ever used for plowing?