Shays in the Sierras: Riding the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad

I make no secret about being a fan of geared steam locomotives, and a recent visit to California’s Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad got me back in touch with a Shay superstar, former West Side Lumber Co. No. 10, the largest narrow gauge Shay built.

I was surprised to find the 84-ton superheated engine sitting under steam, ready to pull the 12:30 p.m. train without the diamond stack that’s been on it since soon after it left West Side in 1967 and started pulling tourist trains at Fish Camp, Calif. The shotgun stack ruled this day. I inquired with the crew, who told me the engine had been jacked up for new tires last winter, the stack had to be removed for clearance, and there just wasn’t time to replace it for the 2016 season. Oil-burning No. 10, built late in Lima’s Shay production in 1928, looks sharp with the original straight stack.

 If you’ve never been to the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad here’s the way it works: Trains leave from a replica logging camp, located just outside Yosemite National Park. The location is below grade off highway 41, an hour north of Fresno. If you are a model railroader or a student of shop/yard layouts (as I am), the arrangement here is a two-track yard-loading area that leads into a rustic two-stall engine house. Inside the engine house is space for two Shays, the other being sister Shay No. 15, a 59-ton 1913 locomotive, also of West Side pedigree. Tracks drop downhill 2 miles to Lewis Creek Canyon on the grade of the Madre Sugar Pine Railway, which hauled its last logs in 1931. At that location, the trains enter a loop, so every other trip the engine pulls, and every other trip, the engine backs. It’s an authentic Shay operation – few logging railroads had time, space, or money to built wyes or install turntables. So pull-me or push-me was the rule in the woods and it is this way once more.

 I like this railroad’s passenger cars. The line has open cars with roofs, but they’re back in the train. Right behind the locomotive are two skeleton log cars with replica log loads on them. They’re actually passenger cars — the inside of the log is hollowed out to make bench seats. This really adds to the logging and lumbering atmosphere. When the steam locomotive doesn’t run, the railroad offers West Side Lumber Co. Jenny motorcars, fashioned from Ford Model A cars. I didn’t ride one of these, but I saw them in action.

The highlight of the show for those on a locomotive-hauled train is the climb from Lewis Creek Canyon back to the depot. Leaving the loop, the trains hit a 4 percent grade. The tracks weave up and through dense forests of tall pines and encounter a horseshoe curve near the top. The locomotive responds with a mighty exhaust and the sound of the clattering crankshaft and growling gears. It’s enough to help you step back in time to the days of Shays and pines in the Sierras.