Makes me want to cry, to return to the days when California and the world was good. I was born in Sacramento in’48.

Thank you for presenting this local history to me. My old boss and friend Wayne Greeley (as in nearby Greeley Hill,) worked for Pickering while growing up. I'm originally from Sonora and graduated from Sonora High School in 1994. I now live in Angels Camp.

It's a miracle these films were taken and preserved ! It's the real deal, not modern tourist rail ! This certainly is a gift FOR modelers, to be able to see it in all its glory; how it really looked !!

This Is Great We Love Trains 😘😘We All Love Trains 😘😊😊😊🚂🚂🚂💕💕💕

As a kid I used to stay with my Grandparents every Summer in Jamestown and he had a place between Jimtown and Sonora where the trains passed right by his house! We'd sit out there and watch them pass by and spent some time at the Roundhouse there. Every town in those Sierra foothills were logging camps or Gold Camps at one time.

The donkey engine explains the tech of the time , looks as dangerous as the times were to live . Great video of old times , this gives an explanation we all can pass on as men used machinery to excel into this great country we live and love .

No wonder wood used to be so cheap, we could use some more of this today.

Heisler No.3 seen in this film running on the standard gauge is currently operational at Roaring Camp and Big Trees RR (as of December 2018) and will be running regular service while two truck Shay Dixiana has a retube (No.3 was bought with its narrow gauge trucks when it went to Roaring Camp). Westside three truck Shay No.7 is operable at Roaring Camp but will be stripped down for a heavy overhall once the Dixiana is retubed. Westside three truck Shays Nos. 10 & 15 are both operable at Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine RR with the No. 10 currently running the regular service - Yosemite rolling stock is almost exclusively ex-Westside including Swayne skeleton cars converted to carry passengers.

Ironically I just watched a video of some steam engines, or what’s left of them, in a field on private property in Oregon. One of them is none other than Sierra #38. It’s boiler is detached from its chassis. Was pretty cool to see it running in this video.

I love these old films. That work looked unbelievably dangerous and I'm sure many lives were lost, serious injuries endured. It's awesome to see the evolution of this country so raw.

Addendum to what I just posted. Has nothing to do with trains but with a an interesting tidbit for logging nostalgia and the mention here of "lumberjacks". On the West Coast--including, I think, California--the word generally used was "logger", although the preferred tree feller was from New England, where the word lumberjack was used. Fellers from Minnesota and Michigan brought the axe back from the cut with one hand near the butt of the handle while riding the other hand up the handle toward the blade, as you will usuallty see when someone is splitting firewood. (Observe Charles Bronson where he is first encountered in the movie The Magnificent Seven) This seems at first to be just good sense for controlling the swing. In felling the huge trees of the West Coast, however, the accuracy of the cut and, with practice, the ease of the swing, is greater when both hands are kept near the butt of the handle throughout the swing, provided of course that the feller has adequate wrist and grip strength. (Probably everyone in those days had such strength.) This was the method among New England lumberjacks, who were judged by the West Coast logging companies to be more productive than fellers from the Great Lakes region.

Wow! Spectacular video. My grandfather was a steam donkey operator for the West Side Lumber Company before he went off to WWII in the Navy under MacAurthur on a mine sweeper. Camp 18 as I remember. He circled it in the edition of "Last of the 3 Foot Loggers" that he gave me chronicling West Side story. I have such nostalgia for the era of steam logging and wish I could have been there to be a part of it in my own youth. Hard men doing hard work. That is what this country was built upon. Oh, and incidently... 3 truck Shays rule!! Lol. Discuss!

Nice to see the old footage of steam in color!

Great video! The 38 was originally Weyerhauser's #4 on their line west of Klamath Falls. I hauled lots of truckloads of logs over her old railroad grades in the 80's and 90's. She's sitting in pieces on a siding off the UP mainline in Merrill, Oregon. I love that old girl.

Awesome film!!! Thank you for sharing!!!

So cool to see them in action for real , and not just the tourist stuff. I'm up in Cadillac, Michigan, home to the Shay, and we ( surrounding counties ) used to look like this in the 1900 area. Thanks for the upload / share.

The producer of the original film built the two replica locomotives at Promontory Utah. He also built steam engines for Walt Disney. As a native to the Sierras, I thank you for posting this

This is a fascinating account of a tiny part of my own past, but two items are surely incorrect. The first is that the last old log train run on the Sierra rail to the mill was in December of 1965, not in the early sixties. The second item concerns the1963 mill fire that is said here to have ended the Pickering mill operation. I worked in the mill in 1964 and saw no evidence of any such fire; nothing appeared to be any different from what it must have been twenty years earlier, and the person who showed me around the mill, one Arky Hoggerman who on the night shift ran the machine, the log rail carrier for planing (as shown in operation here), made no mention of any fire. The mill, mill pond, and dry yard during this time were just as they are pictured here. That was Fall of 1964. It was my second job with Pickering., the first having been the driving for Pickering of a water truck --a heavy rigid Kline off road hauler, watering down dusty, narrow and steep logging roads in the Sierras. Later, while I worked day shift in the dry yard a friend worked at night in the mill pulling edges, (the most dangerous job there), where the logs came in from the mill pond to be planed as the rail carrier went back and forth with frightening speed. He stood in a pit to sweep lumber to the sides where it would hit rotary saw blades that stuck out of the metal floor that sloped steeply away from his pit. If the lumber came too fast he had two options; he could either duck down in the pit and let the lumber go over him, or he could reach up to a bar and pull himself up and out of the way. Very fast and risky work that required nerve and very strong hands; I recall Arky saying that the previouis edge puller had worked at that job for thirty years. While we worked at the mill, my friend and I stayed rent free in Arky's log cabin in Standard.

I'm about 30 miles inland from the gulf of mexico. Our little town has a Shay Locomotive set up in a like park area next to the Chamber of Commerce. It was donatedto the city years back. This town was founded by the early days timber logging industry and the tung oil business, the tung nut trees were actually farmed and the tung nuts sold to paint manufacturing companies.

Most all the rail grades are still in place and many easily accessible as forest routs or 4X4 roads. Some need more adventuring to find. Trestle ruins also there to find on the West-side main line out to the timber fields, one on the Clavey River. Most old grades are Natl Forest now, some private (logging). A short section still has track from when West-side was a tourist park, prior to it's current ownership by the Mi-Wuk Tribe. It runs from West-side in Tuolumne City out to the North Fork Tuolumne River and ends in a small turntable for the little tourist rail buses from the 80's, and just before the river crossing. Its a fun rail-trail now. Trestle is gone though. Mill is gone too and only a few old structures remain at West-side. Standard lumber is still in full operation though and product is still shipped to Oakdale by rail, as well as LP gas in tankers shipped up to Sonora. The old grades are quite extensive and, to me, a joy to locate and navigate wherever possible. I recommend and outing, or two - maybe you'll even find an old wooden tie or some track hardware. Yep, that stuff is still out there, here and there...

The Pickering mill at Standard was sold to Fiberboard, which I believe was a spinoff of Louisiana Pacific. They operated the mill and veneer plywood plant until 1995 when it was sold to Sierra Pacific Lumber and the plywood plant was shut down. It is still in operation. Also, before Pickering bought the mill at Standard in 1919 it was the Standard Lumber Co. The Sierra Railroad still hauls much of the finished lumber to Riverbank, Ca. just west of Oakdale.

@07:40--09:00 I think was the most scenic part of this presentation and also showed a "Shorty" Logging Caboose. The operations inside the mill and how lumber was transported by mechanical means for an aftermath of earlier times when all the lumber was moved by carts and donkey's and hand stacked by men. And although a few narration mistakes were made, nothing can replace early color photography of a seldom seen logging operation. Thak you for the upload ❤

Great video. We need more like this

❤ logging steam railroads

When Cali was normal. I was born in 53

Its great to have some models and to be able to see the originals they were modeled from in operation. This film is pure gold. I didn't know about them "stretching" the water holding of the 3 truck Hiesler loco in the yard with a tank car.

I rode the shays in cass west Virginia in2016 and was one of my favorite trips

Love it. It's real and touchable. Thank you for bringing some happy Dream's to a person that is almost done with this life

A moment of silence for all the poor men who lost their lives to runaway train accidents only to have their tragedy made into a crappy song by soul asylum about troubled teens.

Thank you for posting.

Fantastic!

THANK YOU AWESOME 👍

Loved geared locos. Should have a drag race between a Climax a Hiesler and a Shay. Oh the speed. Ha ha ha. Love em all 🚂🚂🚂🚂

Awesome video. Love videos like this, history like this is great! Thanks! :)

I think without a doubt, one of the greatest legacies left behind by the West Side Lumber Company has got to be their fleet of shays. All of the 3 Truck versions are still around along with Hieslers 2 and 3 rounding out the survivors really continues to inspire future generations. Even more exciting that 3, 7, 9, 10, and 15 see occasional to regular service too, still battling some pretty notorious grades but with excursion cars in tow in place of logs.

14 percent grades and 60 degree curves, now that's logging!!

WOW ! What a a lovely dream if the film I have seen could be recreated, everything as it was in the day, steam engines, ways of logging, now long gone unfortunately, but I am told this is progress, yes, maybe,the world moves too fast now, and money matters,well, it does to some people,who have no interest in the past,tourists who are they ??

Sadly all gone forever, - how very fortunate we are that their were enough 'enthusiasts' about to film this, otherwise we would only have some photographs of a way of life that the youngsters of today will never see, - (apart from what's preserved and in museums). Sometimes I wonder just how much progress is for the better. I took my daughter and her family on a trip on a preserved steam line whilst on holiday last year, (we live in the UK). The trip was intended for her teenage children, after a while when she had asked me about twenty questions, even though she is 40 I suddenly realised she had never travelled behind a steam loco either, - time seems to pass too fast nowadays.

Imagine if there were still men like this in California...

10:34 number 10 is not scrapped she is still around at the Mt Ranier Scenic Railroad

I like Narrow Gauge Railroads/Railways. They are cool. The Donkey Engines are also cool too. Also, during the part of the images of the aftermath of runaway trains. I only think about how it happened, because Shays normally go quite slow. But I should also take into consideration how fast some of the Shays were actually going.

Missed a point: the Heisler did not have the tractive effort of a Shay of the same size, but was considerably faster.

I have hiked a few of the old roadbeds up there, although private property limits access to some of them. That is beautiful country. Roaring Camp has one of the old Westside Heislers, still in operation. I think Pickering #3 is still around as well.

I'm liking colorized frame by frame.

Very 😎

Wow, tremendous video. Gotta be one of maybe a handful of footage of Sierra #38 in action with live sound.. maybe the only!

No idea how I got here but this kind of stuff is fascinating. All I can think of is how automation has cost so many jobs, jobs where people had no place to transition into.

I loved this video, just wish the quality was better.Thumbs up!

At 2:55 I think the narrator meant to say 3 truck shays became standard, as there were only about a dozen or so 4 truck shays built.

The scene shown here of the planing operation on the moving rail car could be at the West Side operation, not at Pickering in 1964, because the operation at Pickering did not, at that time, involve a car controller actually riding and controlling from the car. The Arky Hoggerman mentioned in my previous post operated the car from one end of the travel, sitting in a control booth, and alongside the run and quite near the rolling car was a walkway that ran from one end of the travel to the other, on the right of the rail travel as one walked toward the millpond end.

Very nostalgic, but omw many of those activities very pretty unsafe.

THANK GOD FOR AUTOMATION AND RECYCLING....CAN YOU IMAGINE THE DIFFERENCES.....CHIP BOARD, AND .??...

My favorite Ride

I have some 33 LPS of the West side lumber

Prolly not the first to say- yer talking about the Sierra, singular. "Sierra" meaning "saw", composed of MANY teeth (peaks). And ... much logging and sawmilling in the Sierra started, to supply the CPRR, all the way to Promontory. Whereas the UP used hand-hewn lumber, like from WY, once they got into forested areas. FWIW

Where is that large bridge located?

Its nice to see different footage but there wasn't a whole lot of fact checking involved when they made this video.

23 pulling the green chain

Crisp lumber.

👌🇺🇸

Great piece. Would be much better with the frame rate corrected.

💪

16:48 #38's rear drivers just lock up. Oddly enough, I have only seen that kind of thing happen with live steam locomotives.

A Henderson Shay has been on display in Cadillac Michigan's city park for over a half century.

Which spieces of trees were they and what is the estimated age of the largest logs?

I rode the Westside when it was an excursion railroad in the early 1980's. Sadly it was in the way of "progress".

West Side #3 is on the Roaring Camp, right?

is Johnny cash the narrator?

My grandpa on my dads side of the family was a logger ....he also was a drunk

Bourland Trestle @ 3:18?

Four truck shay were never a standard.

Home..

Did they ever make a four cylinder vertical engine Shay? Or how about a two cylinder vertical engine Shay? Did these engines have better pulling power compared to other small engines?

The poor health and safety people! It frightens me to see those donkey engines throwing logs aroung...

Nice footage of steam logging but the narration was often inaccurate. Heislers were not the slowest but the fastest of the three designs with the climax second and the shay slowest. the comment about the shay being able to pull the most is also wrong - the amount of tractive effort is a function of the weight on the drivers so a shay and a heisler of same weight would have the same drawbar pull. Lastly, the sound effects added of the steam exhaust were almost all wrong for the geared engines being way to slow/few.

Pickering's Heisler No 10 was STANDARD gauge locomotive, not a narrow gauge.

11:34 are they using link and pin? Get out from there man!

Go

strip clearing was profitable but wasteful, they didnt forsee, a time when they would cut their own throats, by their greed, to say nothing of the water quality for other people

Thank god for crude oil. No tree's would be left.

I don't see America having the balls these men had to doing anything like this today what it took 150 years to build Environmentalist has stopped in just 30 years never to be seen again. Now they just let the forest BURN in wild fires.

Yep. It all went quiet when all the trees were cut down. Nobody thought to replant. What could have been a renewable resource was destroyed.

Is this video narrated by Johnny Cash?

This is NOT 480p. at best 240p