I have been working on several railroad write ups for the site\u2026 Mostly railroads found in the Mojave Desert, the Daggett lines, with an occasional trip to cement hauling railroads\u2026 It has been fun but also frustrating\u2026 In general we know a bit about each of the lines, either via Myrick, or a Western Railroader\u2026 There is likely something on locomotives owned in the various manufacturer\u2019s lists\u2026 The advent of the digital newspaper movement has helped\u2026 or not\u2026<\/p>\n
It seems as I research each line, there is a piece of information missing, or some piece of \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d that just doesn\u2019t work\u2026 and more research is required\u2026 likely something either hard to find or only found off line in a remote archive with limited hours of operation\u2026<\/p>\n
Most recently (as in the last two days) I have been trying to write up Old Mission Portland Cement\u2026 It has long been on my radar\u2026 It\u2019s covered in a 1964 Western Railroader, as well as in Rich Hamman\u2019s California Central Coast Railways\u2026 (it appears that much of Hamman\u2019s information was derived from the Western Railroader) The Western Railroader article included a roster of the narrow gauge equipment\u2026 one of their<\/em> Plymouths is in the collection of the SPCRR at Ardenwood\u2026 I keep clipping files on the various railroads\u2026 Old Mission included\u2026 in that file was a note about a 2nd<\/sup> less known Plymouth\u2026 a locomotive not included in the published rosters, which is later used at Plaster City on the US Gypsum railroad.<\/p>\n This second locomotive was purchased in 1936\u2026 the issue being that the generally published sources say the plant shut down in 1929, then only reopened in 1941, without the quarry railroad\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 I suspect that our common sources have confused the cement plant and its quarry railroad with the California Central Railroad, a standard gauge short line owned by the cement plant and operated by them\u2026 a railroad that did shut down about 1931\u2026 via Google I have found a history of cement in California that says \u201cThe plant operated intermittently\u201d\u2026 So now I am planning a trip to the a archive in Hollister which may have local papers and business directories which hopefully will better document the plant\u2019s presumed on again, off again operations\u2026<\/p>\n A write up for the Mahave & Milltown is similarly waiting a trip to the Needles\/Kingman area in search of copies of the Needles Eye<\/em>\u2026 the local paper\u2026 Research beyond Myrick suggest the railroad had a much longer life than the generally reported 9 months\u2026 Most of the exisiting information comes from the Arizona side of the Colorado River\u2026 the view from Needles, the railroad\u2019s effective western terminus is missing\u2026<\/p>\n By the way, Myrick is not the villain here\u2026 he writes about the railroad twice, originally in 1963 in Railroads of Nevada & Eastern California, then again in his 2010 Railroad\u2019s of Arizona, Vol 6\u2026 the later information is much expanded\u2026 but the earlier reports seem to better reflect the \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d<\/p>\n Trips are planned, research continues\u2026 comments and thoughts are always welcome.<\/p>\n Randy<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been working on several railroad write ups for the site\u2026 Mostly railroads found in the Mojave Desert, the Daggett lines, with an occasional trip to cement hauling railroads\u2026 It has been fun but also frustrating\u2026 In general we know a bit about each of the lines, either via Myrick, or a Western Railroader\u2026 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pacificng.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}