Hi, CWRail here (Scott Barrett) here. We`re at a little shelter here at the Woodard Bay Conservation Area near Olympia, Washington, which is organized by the Department of Natural Resources. This is their display board.

We have a picture of the 492, and what`s going on here is we`re dumping the second half of a train of logs, and you can see the grapple going down into the water. And the engine, when the operator was called by radio and said, go ahead in the car, and he would go 10 feet, that`ll do.

And this was a pretty common operation. While the train was being unloaded, I`d be on the upper part of the hill inspecting the empty log cars, and my job was to inspect for air dates to see if a car needed to go into the shop, have its air date renewed.

It`s where the air date is, where the process, where the air brake is tested and cleaned. And then I would check the side frames to see that they weren`t cracked, because sometimes a side frame will crack and cause a derailment.

And then I`d check to see that the bunks were not falling over or the extension stakes didn`t have any cracks. And so I would also tie the upper cut down with like several handbrakes while it was on the hill while we were dumping the second part of the train.

This is CWRail, over and out.

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@thurston_county

Hi, CWRail here (Scott Barrett). As South Bay train crews from Vail would take the crane that was stationed at the log dump and pull dead heads or sinker logs from the water. The South Bay tugboat called the R.A. McDonald would drag the sinker logs to a location near the upper trestle where the sinkers were pulled from the water and loaded onto rail cars to be shipped to a Weyerhaeuser mill.

Weyerhaeuser used this location at South Bay to put their logs in the water to be rafted up and towed by a commercial tugboat company to their mill at Everett. This is CWRail, over and out.

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South Thurston County Historical Society
The Chehalis Western Railroad

Mutual Lumber Company 1935 Locomotive Wreck – Part 1

Hi, CW Rail here. Today, we are at the location where the Mutual Lumber Company’s Number 2 locomotive fell twenty feet off a trestle on October 10, 1935 severely injuring four crew members. Seven other crew members sustained minor injuries. All eleven crew members jumped before the Number 2 landed on its side. Old Number 2 is long gone and only bits and pieces remain. The Climax was scrapped in 1959 by the Barrett family along with some friends from Vail and Rainier. The appropriate permissions and permits were obtained in advance. The wreck site is located within Weyerhaeuser’s Vail operation.

In 1959, the truck road system in the woods had not been connected and the old track bed was washed out in several places. While looking for the locomotive, Jim Barrett, who was a conductor on the Vail logging line, came face to face with a big bear which was walking toward him on the old railroad grade. Mr. Barrett climbed a small hill to let the bear walk by and that is when the wreck was located. The weather at the time was rainy and windy and unbearable for both man and beast.

A few days later, we all came to examine the wrecked Climax locomotive and make plans to scrap the locomotive. The Climax locomotive is a type of geared steam locomotive and was manufactured by the Climax Locomotive Works located in Corry, Pennsylvania. The locomotive had been stripped for parts by the Mutual Lumber Company for their remaining fleet of Climax locomotives and the locomotive was just a shell when we found it in 1959.

While examining the site, my older brother Chuck found a deer bone in the mud and told me this was the leg bone of the engineer. Since I was 7 years old, I believed him, and took off running. I made it about half a mile down the road before they caught up with me. This CW Rail over and out.

*supplemental content provided by: South Thurston County Historical Society, Tenino, WA

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Hi, CWRail here (Scott Barrett). I`m at one of the remaining trestle bents on the 44 line on Weyerhaeuser`s Vail (Washington) logging railroad, running out to Camp 4.4, which was the last logging camp at the Vail operation and the farthest logging camp from Vail.

It took a long time on Sunday to make the trip from Vail to Camp 4.4 to be ready for work on Monday. This is CWRail, over and out.

Photo: July 29, 1947 – taken by Bob Gehrman who worked at Vail.

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@thurston_county

Hi, CWrail here (Scott Barrett) here. I`m at the junction of the Ten Line and Branch Two on Weyerhaeuser`s Vail logging railroad that ran into the woods from the 1920s until the late 1940s when all the tracks in the woods were pulled up and Weyerhaeuser ran log trains to South Bay until the 1980s from their log truck to train transfers.

The grade to the left ran to Camp 5 and the grade to the right was Branch Two running up the hill to the Twin Bridges where the line switched back running to Siding 8. Train crews in the steam era leaving Siding 8 with loaded log cars ran down the hill to the Twin Bridges ran around their train and headed back down the hill to Vail (Washington).

This is CWrail over and out.

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Hi, this is CWrail here (Scott Barrett). I`m at the junction of the 40 line and Siding 8 in the Weyerhaeuser woods. Out of Vail (Washington), where train crews would bring in loaded log cars from the sides in the woods, on the 30 line, 40 line, and the 50 line, they would drop off their loaded logs and then log cars and then pick up empties and head back out to the sides.

Usually a train crew out of Vail would bring empties up to Siding 8, leave the empties, and then take the loads down to Vail, and then later they would either swing the loads down to South Bay to be dumped in the water and taken to Everett, or they would leave the loads at Vail, and another train crew would take them to South Bay.

This is CW Rail, over and out.

#logging #logginglife #loggingtrain #logginghistory #history #washingtonstate #washingtonstatehistory #thurstoncounty
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