Bill, thanks for the update. Got photos? I remember using terraserver or some other mapping site some time back, and couldn't believe the track routing north of the tunnel. As you said, two big switchbacks. No wonder 10 mph. Actually I would love to ride through that trackage.
We took a camera but could not really find a good place to take them .. it was so crowded. The press had a cordoned off area away from the mob, so I guess they probably got some good footage. I tried to take one pic through the dome car window but it did not come out well as the window glass (or plexiglass?) was sort of cloudy.
I couldn't get a good map out of Terraserver. Google maps gave me great maps, but the satellite imagry was missing some of the closer detail shots.
Yoho and Boxcab, Mapquest will show you the switchbacks (er, hairpins). I got on there tonight and started with Ashland, OR. Look at I-5 south of there and a place labeled "Steinmans". Center on that and zoom in. I tried to create a link but the addresses for their maps are so incredibly long there's no way it would fit on a single line. The track config is almost unbelievable.
There was (is) another tunnel started in the vicinity of Steinmans that was abandoned due to the rock was too hard (can you believe it?). That's why the rails backtrack toward Ashland in the 4% climb to the summit. If one is an adventurer, the original tunnel can be found amid overgrown foliage.
Bill, That was Buck Rock Tunnel. It was started by the Oregon & California, but when the Central Pacific took, Chief Engineer William Hood decided that the O&C route wasn't short enough and that it would take too long to build. So he surveyed out the current route and all constuction on the O&C route was stopped. Hood's route is about 2 miles shorter than the O&C's, but the O&C's route was never to exceed 3% and mainly clung to the south side of mountain that got sun on it. The CP's route was on the north side in the shadow of the mountains, so it took a long time for the snow to melt off. It was also really expensive to haul trains since 4 or 5 2-8-0s or later 2-10-2s were needed to get over the hill. And thats why E.H. Harriman had the Natron Cutoff built. The Route over the Siskiyous even caused Espee's Cabforwards and Northerns to be banned from the route between Hornbrook and Ashland. It was reported that engine crews had a hard time keeping the crownsheet covered on the Cabforwards and one finally blew up in the 30's somewhere near Coles or Steinman. The ICC investigated that accident and banned them from the going over the Siskiyou. There was also problems with clearances in tunnel 14 since it is on a sharp curve on the first hairpin heading down the mountain. I believe it is a 14 degree curve. And the over hang from the boiler due to the articulated chassis came close to hitting the wall. That is also why the 4449 didn't keep going south when in went down the Siskiyou Line in the 80's, it only went as far as Medford. [ April 26, 2005, 12:28 PM: Message edited by: SP Cabforward ]
Just rembered something, William Hood is also the same person who did the Cantara Loop in to get the main line out of the Sacramento River Canyon and the Tehachapi Loop. As you can see he probably liked seeing track looped back on it self with steep grades. It is like he was catering to modern train watcher.
Holy Hairpins batman. That's some twisty track. On the plus side, for modeling, you could justify the tight radii and turns of a 4x8 sheet layiout with that. Question. What kind of traffic did SP send over the route before it was leased? Did they as they do with Donner's and feather river divide traffic between natron and Siskyous?
Yoho, Once the Natron Cutoff was finished almost all traffic from the Sisiyou Line was diverted over to there in 1926. The SP was going to for the ballast on the Natron Cutoff to season up real good before running passenger trains over it, but tunnel 13 caved in and passenger traffic was diverted over to the Cascade Line sooner than anticipated. The Sisikiyou mainly hauls the same things now as it did when the Espee was in control. With the exception of reefers out of Medford and Ashland during the season when the friut trees were harvested. There were alot of pears I believe. Siskiyou line traffic picked up during WW2, There was a lot of troop trains that originated from Camp White. It was and is mainly lumber products. Once the Natron Cutoff was completed the Siskiyou line was pretty much forgotten about. That 's why there are still Semaphore and Wig Wag signals on the line. It never got upgraded. The CORP is removing a lot of the old semaphores and making the Siskiyou line "dark" territory. Train crews have to in touch with other trains and the dispatcher to find out where every one is.
Interesting. So, does that mean that SP never had the traffic to and from Portland to justify routing over both? OR it simply wasn't worth it with the grading? I suppose it makes sense. Anything moving east from Portland is likely to move over SP&S or UP east anyway. No point in going south to meet up with the Overland route. So that limits it to primarly to originated traffic. My understanding was that if it wasn't Donner's pass and the Overland route, SP kinda ignored maintainence anyway, so it's condition really doesn't explain much.
Some more background information...as early as the 1860's there were plans to run a railroad southeast from the Eugene area through Cascade Summit to the desert, then southeast across Oregon and Nevada to the Humboldt River. When the CP/SP controlled California & Oregon was building north in the 1870's/1880's, it really wanted to go east of the Cascades to avoid the grades and curves in the Siskiyou Mountains. However, by the time that construction was approaching the northern portions of California the southward building Oregon & California was already at Roseburg, and the C&O had to build the line it did by default. Building a flatter, straighter line down the east side of the Cascades was always near the top of SP's want list, but until Harriman came along the company either did not have the capital (or the willingness to spend the capital it had) to build such a route. Harriman finally brought the finances and the will in, and he started work on what would one day become the Natron cutoff. Harriman's plan called for the construction of three lines: 1. The SP would build eastward from the Eugene area, crossing the Cascade range and then heading out across the Oregon desert. 2. The UP would build westward from Ontario, OR, to a connection with the SP line somewhere out in the desert. 3. The SP would build a second line northward from Weed through Klamath Falls to a connection with the east-west line somewhere east of the Cascades. The eastward building SP line got as far as Oakridge, the northward building SP line got as far as Kirk (40 miles north of Klamath Falls), and the UP line didn't get very far out of Ontario when Harriman's death and the anti-trust lawsuits caused the dissolution of the Harriman empire. It was not until 1926 that the SP finally closed the gap between Oakridge and Kirk. As noted, once the Natron cutoff was in operation the Siskiyou Line was severely downgraded. Almost all through traffic went over the Natron line, but the Siskiyou line remained fairly healthy due to the originating traffic. The Siskiyou line simply did not work as a very efficient through route, and SP actually closed the south end (Ashland-Montegue) for the last 14 months or so before CORP took over. I hope this helps. JDLX Elko, NV http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails
One more thing I just discovered...Siskiyou Daily News has an on-line story about the YW's problems, and a proposed loan from the City of Yreka to pay liability insurance. The article states that the YW suspended operations for two days recently because it lost its insurance for reasons of non-payment of premiums. Link to story: http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/articles/2005/04/26/news/news5.txt JDLX Elko, NV
Wait, Union Pacific Leased the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company in 1886. Why would they be interested in another line through the cascades to the south? What advantages would this have had versus the line through the blue mountains and the Overland Route?
In the midst of a sad situation, it seems good news that the City feels enough value for the YW, to propose this idea. A small, yet positive event. Boxcab E50
YoHo, You have to remember that Harriman was in control of both the SP and UP at the time. The Cascade line was an easier route than the Siskiyou Line. The fact that UP was going to have a hand in it was probably to ease the interchange of traffic between the two roads. I don't think that the UP was looking for an easier route.
Well yeah, that makes sense for the Natorn Cutoff, but why bypass Portland, a port city with an easy UP grade moving out of it?
Harriman's idea with the cross state railroad was to combine the revenue producing areas of the Willamette Valley with the quickest route east possible. Going north to Portland and then eastward over the old OR&N did provide a water level route out of Portland, but you still had to get through the Blue Mountains, which was (and still is) a siginificant operational bottleneck. Just getting to the Overland route meant taking traffic down the Siskiyou line, with all of its steep grades, sharp curves, and numerous attendant operating problems, then down the Sacramento River Canyon to the Redding area, then all the way south to Roseville before heading east. Traffic going this way then had another expensive mountain range to cross (the Sierras over Donner). Completion of the cross state railroad would have allowed Harriman to route eastbound traffic over one major mountain range (the Cascades southeast from Eugene). Eastbound traffic would then have a fairly flat run across the desert to the Oregon Short Line main at Ontario, which then provides another flat run eastward across Idaho to the UP mainline. Such a routing would have cut a lot of miles and elevation gain off of either of the other lines. It helps to remember that this was a time when most of the rail traffic flowed from west to east. Does this make sense? JDLX Elko, NV
