RAILROAD OPERATIONS UPDATE ‘The Monster Arrives” 15 AUG 1969

Recall in our last Update, the McCloud River Railroad, in a joint project with the McCloud River Lumber Company, installed a heavy duty End-Ramp at the stub end of the McCloud Team Track. The purpose of this ramp is to facilitate the requirement to handle the increasingly larger forest equipment needed to harvest trees in the rugged and remote region South of McCloud. Future Harvest Area

This Week, the McCloud River Railroad delivered the heaviest piece of logging equipment yet; a large Yarder with associated equipment. Here it is coming Over-the-Hill on a Heavy Duty Flatcar between two Idler-Flats and locomotive #42 ‘Bones’ in command of the train.

The piece of logging equipment featured in this special move is a ‘Washington Iron Works’ two drum Skyline Yarder with a telescoping 80’ Tower (the Cab has been removed for shipment). This machine weighs-in at nearly 350,000lbs when fully equipped for logging. It has a 450hp Cummins engine and can grab trees nearly half a mile away. While not the heaviest load the MRR has ever hauled, it is the heaviest self-propelled machine that it has ever handled.

The Railroad Crews have cut-off the lead Idler-Flatcar and spotted the Heavy Duty Flatcar at the new End-Ramp. The Lumber Company Crews have broken the chains on the load and are in the process of attaching a tow cable to the Yarder which will be used to winch the Yarder down the ramp.

While the other Lumber Company Crews are preparing the Yarder to be winched down the ramp, these Loggers are unloading the Yarder’s Cab onto a waiting Lumber Company Truck using good old fashioned cat bars and muscle. No worries about scratching the paint. The Cab is Armored for the protection of the Operator, and it is going to get scratched-up soon enough anyway… it is a Logging Machine after all.

Looks like the crews have a good handle on it. Slow & Easy gets it Done (especially when the Insurance Underwriter and all the Company Executives are watching). The Lumber Company brought one of their Woods Cats into town to use its winch as a brake while a local Heavy Towing Company was hired to winch the Yarder down the ramp.

FUTURE UPDATES The next phase of the Yarder Operation will be to move the Yarder to the Lumber Company’s Maintenance Facility for final assembly, operator training, and a systems check as Lumber Company crews mount the Yarder’s cab, attach the control systems, and load the drums with 2500 ft of cable in anticipation for a hard but productive life in the woods. This should take about a week. Following final assembly, the next big hurdle will be to drive the Yarder to its’ work site and set it up for logging. Currently we do not have an anticipated date for this. The move of such a large and heavy piece of equipment across several California state roadways and through National Forest land requires a number of State and Federal permits which are currently tied-up in ‘bureaucratic red tape’. In the meantime, McCloud Lumber Company crews are in the process of shoring-up several bridges along the proposed route and building bypass roads across Company Owned land to keep progress moving and to get this Yarder busy Making Money!