McCloud River Railroad : Passenger Operations: Excursion Photos

Presidents Day 1969 Excursion


By the fall of 1968 the McCloud River Railroad had finalized its order for the trio of SD38s that would arrive the following spring to replace the fleet of Baldwin diesels. The Pacific Locomotive Association schedule their annual winter trip to run with the Baldwins on 18 January 1969, but ended up cancelling the event due to low ticket sales. Thus, it was somewhat ironic that only a few weeks later the Bay Area Electric Association managed to run an all-Pullman trip. The excursion ran from Oakland to McCloud, overnighted in town, and then returned back south the following day. Two feet of snow fell on the train the night it spent in McCloud, and getting the cars back to Mt. Shasta the next morning required the combined efforts of all seven active locomotives then on the roster to get the special back across the hill to Mt. Shasta City- #29, #32, #33, and #34 on the front with a snowplow and the #25, #31, and #35 pushing on the rear. The #25's chief contribution to the train was steam heat for the coaches. One of the McCloud engineers involved remembered years after the event that "we were lucky to get that train out of town."


The President's Day special in the sawmill.

Another shot in the sawmill. This view clearly shows the conveyor used to move woodships from the fuel house to the large open storage piles on the north side of the tracks.

A color view of some of the cars mostly obscured by snowbanks in the mill.

One last shot in the sawmill.

The train in heavy snow at Signal Butte.