(The following story by Thomas Pardee appeared on the Modesto Bee website on July 9.)
OAKDALE, Calif. — It looks like Thomas the Tank Engine’s raspier, drippier, crankier grandfather.
Covered in oily black, the McCloud No. 18 steam engine makes its slow, lurching way through Oakdale toward the rolling hills east of the city.
It’s a hot Saturday, and the clouds of steam that puff out of the chimney cast shadows over the pastures near the tracks, where horses and cows watch curiously.
Steels wheels begin to grind. Pistons start to pound. Steam hisses.
“There’s that sound,” said Bob Woods, 57, the fireman of No. 18. “When these things work hard, they get that classic sound.”
It’s a sound not regularly heard in the San Joaquin Valley for more than50 years.
The McCloud No. 18 is on loan to the Sierra Railroad in Oakdale. It arrived in April and is expected to stay a few years.
On this day, No. 18 is hauling cars with passengers for a lunchtime Wild West show, a favorite with children. The show’s schedule allows the train to travel at only 10 mph, although it’s capable of much higher speeds. The engine runs this route, as well as others, every weekend.
“This engine is 93 years old, but it is still earning a living,” said Larry Ingold, No. 18’s engineer. “It’s still doing what it was built to do for the company that bought it. It kind of makes you wonder about the guys that built it. … Obviously, they’re long gone.”
While much has changed about and around No. 18, the engine itself looks very much the way it did when it was built in 1914. As it travels through the dry, brown foothills, it evokes images of movies such as “High Noon,” which, appropriately, was filmed in the area.
But the McCloud No. 18 is not a film prop. It has a history that spans generations — a history that, thanks to efforts to preserve one of the nation’s favorite eras, continues today.
It was October 1914. World War I was heating up overseas, and Philadelphia felt the boom. The shipbuilding industry started its dramatic climb while Baldwin Locomotive Works, based in nearby Eddystone, faced a tough year. It built less than half its normal number of locomotives.
One of the those engines was the future No. 18, ordered by the McCloud River Railroad, near Mount Shasta. At a price of $16,871, the equivalent of more than $300,000 today, and weighing in at 90 tons, the engine was a Mikado 2-8-2 type locomotive destined for a long and active career. The 2-8-2 means it has two wheels on the front axle, eight on the middle and two at the end.
No. 18 made its debut in style at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco as part of an exhibit that included the Weed and Red River lumber companies. No. 18 served as the engine of the display train carrying some of the McCloud area’s finest lumber.
After the expo, No. 18 started its 42-year run with the McCloud River Railway. Carrying various freight, mostly lumber, it took its place as a part of the heartbeat of the town, which lived or died by the railroad and the lumber it carried. The company almost single-handedly revived the area’s logging business.
It worked in McCloud all the way through the Great Depression and World War II. In 1956, No. 18 was sold to Yreka Western Railroad, a smaller operation north of Weed. In Yreka, No. 18 did the same kind of work it always had, hauling logs throughout the California-Oregon border region.
Then, in 1958, the Yreka railroad did what many of its peers in the United States were doing — it purchased its first diesel engine.
Diesel engines are superior when it comes to powering locomotives. Instead of using steam pressure, they use electric generators to power the wheels.
Diesel engines are cleaner, don’t require as many costly repairs, don’t burn as much fuel and can pull heavier loads than steam engines.
They also don’t require a fireman, putting men like Woods, filling the role on the Oakdale run, out of a job.
“To operate a diesel engine you only need one pilot,” said Ingold, the Oakdale engineer. “That’s probably why you don’t see them around anymore.”
As diesel engines started to dominate rail lines all over the country, No. 18 continued to make a modest living, running some of Yreka’s passenger excursions. Every year, it became more and more obsolete.
In 1964, No. 18 ruptured a cylinder head. It needed to be replaced, but the railroad lacked the money and facilities to do it.
The engine was parked in the railyard in Yreka, covered with a tarp and largely forgotten.
“It just became part of the landscape,” said Dennis Woodruff, a Yreka engineer who has worked with the railroad for 27 years. “We walked by it every day, and went by it on the other trains every day. It was just there.”
For almost 35 years, McCloud No. 18 sat parked in Yreka, slowly rusting and deteriorating. A train that had helped build a Northern California community was frozen in time, a relic of the past.
Over the years, the Yreka railroad toyed with the idea of moving the engine to one of its affiliates in Arizona. But these plans never were realized.
It wasn’t until 1998, when the Yreka railroad itself was being sold and the engines marketed separately, that No. 18 was uncovered for sale at auction.
The highest bidder?
The McCloud River Railroad — the same company that bought it new 84 years before.
The engine returned to McCloud, where it spent the next three years being overhauled. It underwent boiler work, had its brakes replaced and new bearings installed in the wheels. While the the work was extensive, Ingold said it wasn’t “necessarily a restoration.”
“It’s like an old car,” he said. “Once in a while it needs new tires or a new battery, but it’s still the same car.”
In February 2001, after $350,000 in repairs, No. 18 was back on the rails, although it was mostly a novelty. It ran several passenger excursions out of McCloud for the next four years.
In 2005, financial necessity forced the McCloud Railroad to sell No. 18 again, this time to the Virginia & Truckee Restoration Committee.
The Northern Nevada Railway Foundation is in the process of reconstructing the historic 21⁄2-mile V&T railroad between Carson City and Virginia City and was looking for authentic steam trains to draw tourists to its replica wooden passenger cars.
But the project won’t be complete until 2011, so No. 18 went into temporary storage.
But instead of letting it deteriorate again, the V&T commission made a deal with the Sierra Railroad in Oakdale, where No. 18 will stay until it’s needed in Nevada.
Here it runs several passenger excursions every week, including the Wild West show on Saturdays, a murder mystery dinner on Fridays and brunch on Sundays.
Chris Hart, president of Sierra’s dinner train, said this makes No. 18 part of an exclusive club.
“This is the first time since the 1950s that there will be a full-time steam engine operating on a regular basis in the San Joaquin Valley.”
Not too bad for a 93-year-old.