West Side Lumber Company Railroad: Roster, History, Lines

Last revised: September 30, 2026

The West Side Lumber Company was the three-foot logging railroad at Tuolumne, California. It left a sawmill beside the Sierra Railway and ran east into the Stanislaus forest, toward the country south of Hetch Hetchy. The gauge was 36 inches. The engines were Shays and Heislers. At its largest the main line ran past 70 miles, with more than 250 miles of temporary spur grades laid into a cutting and taken up again. The last logging season was 1960. Two trains brought the empty log cars out on June 6 and 7, 1961.

Finished lumber left town on the standard-gauge Sierra, which reached Tuolumne on February 1, 1900. The narrow gauge stayed in the woods. It was one of the last three-foot loggers in the West. The tables below are the geared fleet, with Lima shop numbers and the builder’s figures. Nine of the thirteen engines still exist. Nos. 10, 12, and 15 are together again on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad at Fish Camp.

West Side Lumber Company three-truck Shay 10 with logs near Camp Eight, Tuolumne County, October 25, 1960

Shay No. 10 with a log train near Camp Eight, bound for the mill at Tuolumne, October 25, 1960. Lima shop 3315, built March 2, 1928. Richard Kindig photo.

On this page: At a glance · Tuolumne and the flume company · Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley · Seventy miles of woods railroad · Pickering, and the last season · Shay roster · Heisler roster · Where they are in 2026

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	West Side Flume & Lumber Company, in place by 1899. The logging railroad was incorporated in 1900 as the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley. The lumber-company name West Side Lumber Company is on the books by about 1903
Headquarters	Tuolumne, Tuolumne County, California. The town was Carter, also called Carters, when the mill was built
Gauge	36 inches
Connection	Sierra Railway at Tuolumne, standard gauge, for the finished lumber. First Sierra train into town, February 1, 1900
Owners of the mill	West Side Flume & Lumber, then West Side Lumber. Pickering Lumber from March 4, 1925. The West Side Lumber name is back on the engine cards in July 1934. Pickering Lumber Corporation again by 1958, the engines still lettered West Side. Fibreboard held the property after the railroad shut down
Route	East from the Tuolumne mill into the Stanislaus forest. March 1908: 35 miles, to Thompson’s Meadows. Largest main line: past 70 miles, within about 6 miles of Hetch Hetchy Valley, plus more than 250 miles of temporary spurs. About 38 miles still in use in 1960
Power	Four Stearns two-truck Heislers, 1899–1901. Two Lima two-truck Shays, 1902 and 1903. Seven Lima three-truck Shays, 1911–1928, three of them bought secondhand. Oil fuel on the Lima cards from No. 5 on
Last logging trains	Season of 1960. Empty cars brought out June 6 and 7, 1961. Rail salvage by 1967
What remains	Nine engines. Fish Camp has Nos. 10, 12, and 15. Roaring Camp has Heisler No. 3 (as its No. 2, Tuolumne), Shay No. 7 (Sonora), and, since August 2026, Shay No. 14 (Rosa). No. 8 is on display in Granby, Colorado. No. 9 is at Mount Pleasant, Iowa. No. 2 is in the park at Tuolumne

Tuolumne and the flume company

The Sierra Railway of California was the 1897 project of a San Francisco group, William H. Crocker among them. From Oakdale it climbed through Jamestown and Sonora into the timber. The same men had lumber in mind before the last rail was down. By 1899 the West Side Flume & Lumber Company had a sawmill site at Carter, the settlement that became Tuolumne, and a narrow-gauge railroad started east into the trees. Thomas S. Bullock was the general manager the company put its name on an engine for.

The tract was about 55,000 acres. The first seasons used a short woods line, on the order of ten miles, out to a place called Nashton. Nashton later became Camp 8, and for the first years the rolling stock was kept there rather than at the mill. The Sierra’s depot, opened with the first train on February 1, 1900, sat a few hundred yards from the new mill. Logs came down the narrow gauge. Dressed lumber went out on the Sierra, to Oakdale and the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific.

A flume was the other way to move lumber off a Sierra hillside, and the company’s first name said so. Rail replaced it once the cuttings moved far enough from the mill that a flume could not follow. The gauge was chosen for that country. Three-foot track could be spiked to a dirt roadbed, bent around a sidehill, and taken up when the timber on a spur was gone.

Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley

In 1900 the lumber company incorporated the railroad as a common carrier, the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley. The name pointed at two places the track never reached. Hetch Hetchy Valley lies inside what became Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Valley itself was a different railroad’s problem, the Yosemite Valley Railroad up the Merced. Bullock opened the Turnback Inn near Tuolumne in November 1901, a hotel for a tourist trade that would have needed the narrow gauge to keep building east.

A railway-guide listing for March 1908 shows what the company was running.

March 1908 railway guide listing for the Hetch-Hetchy and Yosemite Valley Railway Company, Tuolumne, California

March 1908. The Hetch-Hetchy & Yosemite Valley Railway, J. R. Prince, secretary and treasurer, Tuolumne. Thirty-five miles, to Thompson’s Meadows. The listing says it is a logging road, with no freight or passenger service. Author’s collection.

Thirty-five miles was a real railroad by then. From the end of track the guide still counted 65 miles to Yosemite Valley and 30 miles to Hetch Hetchy. San Francisco’s own Hetch Hetchy Railroad came later, in 1917: standard gauge, from the Sierra at Hetch Hetchy Junction, hauling cement and men to O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Lima’s card for Shay No. 5, ordered by the flume company and finished September 16, 1902, says the buyer had become the West Side Lumber Company about the time the engine arrived. A Forest Service chronology puts the shorter name in 1903. The engines kept Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley lettering in the Lima ownership chain until Pickering, and the railway name itself lasted until the West Side title came back in 1934.

Pickering Lumber caboose #02, a tiny wooden contraption with a frame barely long enough to support a pair of arch-bar trucks, was built by the company's own shop forces in Tuolumne County, California. Donald Duke photo.

Seventy miles of woods railroad

From Tuolumne the main line crossed the North Fork of the Tuolumne, then Hull Creek, and kept east toward the Clavey River. A Forest Service guide to the grade puts the steepness where the company tried to hold it, below about 4.8 percent. That is still a grade a rod engine would rather not start a log train on, and the curves were the curves of a sidehill logging road. The answer was a geared locomotive, all of the weight on drivers, able to walk a train over light rail and a dirt roadbed.

By the late 1940s the main line ran past 70 miles and came within about six miles of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Temporary spurs, built for one cutting and then pulled up, added more than 250 miles over the life of the railroad. In 1950 Camp 45 was still in use at milepost 56, so the long railroad was not yet a memory. Trucks were already changing the job. By the middle of the 1940s logs were coming out of the cuttings by truck to reload landings on the railroad, and a new spur was no longer the automatic next step. The 1960 railroad, the one still being operated, was about 38 miles.

Camp 8, the old Nashton, remained the name railfans use for the lower woods. Camp Clavey, up against the river the line was built to reach, was one of the last logging camps, and it shut when the mill did. The cutting season was the dry months. Winter laid the railroad up. A watchman’s job on the North Fork bridge, through the operating season, was fire watch on a wooden structure in a country that burned.

The log cars were skeleton cars, a center beam on two trucks, and the older disconnect trucks that could be spaced to the length of a stem. A documentary account of the Tuolumne and Standard mills together puts each plant, at its peak, at up to about 45 million board feet a year. West Side’s share of that kind of cut is what the narrow gauge was built to move.

Pickering, and the last season

Pickering Lumber took the Tuolumne operation on March 4, 1925. That date is the one Lima wrote on the engine cards. Shay No. 10, ordered after the sale, was built for Pickering and lettered that way when it arrived in 1928. Pickering’s other mill railroad, at Standard, California, was standard gauge and had its own Shays. Those engines are not this roster.

Pickering was in bankruptcy in 1931. In July 1934 the Lima cards put the engines back under West Side Lumber Company, and the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley name was dropped. The black engines with orange numbers in the 1960 photograph are that later West Side. By 1958 the owner on the cards is Pickering Lumber Corporation again, while the locomotives kept working as West Side Lumber into 1960.

At the end of the 1960 season the empty cars were left in the woods and the engines came down for the usual winter work. The company then decided the trucks could do the haul. On June 6 and 7, 1961, two trains went back out and brought the empties in. That was the last logging move. Fibreboard, which held Pickering, took the mill down. Camp Clavey closed for the last time. By 1967 salvage crews had taken up the hardware.

The lower end reopened as a park railroad. In 1968 Frank Cottle leased the mill site, laid track on it, and opened the West Side & Cherry Valley as a tourist line with Shays 12 and 15. Pickering took the operation back in 1970 and extended it about eight miles to River Bridge. Glen Bell, who had founded Taco Bell, bought the property in 1976 and ran it as a park railroad, with boats on the old mill pond. He sold in 1981 and the trains stopped. Pieces of the grade are a trail. The engines had already started to leave.

Shay roster

A Shay carries three vertical cylinders on the right side of the boiler. They turn a crankshaft and a line shaft down that side of the engine, geared to every axle. Lima classed them by nominal tons and trucks. A 50-2 is a 50-ton, two-truck engine. A 70-3 is a 70-ton, three-truck engine. The empty weights below are Lima’s “as built” figures, which sit under the class tonnage. Every engine here is 36-inch gauge and, on the builder card, an oil burner. Tractive effort is in pounds. Shop numbers are Lima’s.

No.	Shop	Built	Class	Cylinders	Drivers	psi	Gear	TE	Empty wt.	Fuel / water	Career
5	730	Sept. 16, 1902	B 50-2	3, 12 x 12	32 in	180	2.21	24,166	85,000	1,000 / 2,000 gal	Built for the flume company. Scrapped September 1950
6	817	Dec. 1, 1903	B 55-2	3, 12 x 12	32 in	180	2.21	24,166	86,000	1,200 / 2,400 gal	New firebox Sept. 24, 1921. Lima lists wrecks in 1910, 1912, 1915, 1935, and 1940. Scrapped 1950
7	2465	July 28, 1911	C 60-3	3, 11 x 12	32 in	200	2.529	25,820	105,600	1,000 / 2,000 gal	Built for Truckee Lumber, Butte & Plumas No. 4. To West Side about 1917–18. Roaring Camp No. 7 Sonora, running
8	3176	March 29, 1922	C 70-3	3, 12 x 15	34 in	200	2.53	32,162	130,000	1,200 / 3,000 gal	Built for West Side. Moffat Road Railroad Museum, Granby, Colorado, since Oct. 8, 2021
9	3199	April 23, 1923	C 70-3	3, 12 x 15	34 in	200	2.53	32,162	140,000	1,200 / 3,000 gal	Built for West Side. Midwest Central Railroad, Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Lettering is still West Side
10	3315	March 2, 1928	C 70-3	3, 12 x 15	34 in	200	2.53	32,162	140,700	1,200 / 3,420 gal	Built for Pickering at Tuolumne. Heaviest of the three 70-3s. Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine No. 10, running
12	3302	April 21, 1926	C 60-3	3, 11 x 12	32 in	200	2.529	25,820	113,500	1,200 / 2,000 gal	Built as Swayne Lumber No. 6, Oroville. Homemade piston valves, 1929. To West Side March 6, 1940. Fish Camp, 2026, under restoration. The move west
14	2835	June 15, 1916	C 60-3	3, 11 x 12	32 in	200	2.211	22,563	99,800	1,000 / 2,500 gal	Built as Sierra Nevada Wood & Lumber No. 10, later Hobart Estate No. 10. To West Side in 1939. Roaring Camp, August 2026, named Rosa
15	2645	May 20, 1913	C 60-3	3, 11 x 12	32 in	200	2.211	22,563	98,920	1,000 / 2,000 gal	Built as Sierra Nevada Wood & Lumber No. 9, later Hobart Estate No. 9. Fell from a trestle near Hobart Mills in the 1920s. To West Side in 1939. Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine No. 15, running

No. 5’s boiler is a wagon-top, 46 inches in diameter. No. 6 is an extended wagon-top, also 46 inches. The three-truck engines are extended wagon-tops: 44.25 inches on Nos. 7, 14, and 15, 44.375 inches on No. 12, 50 inches on Nos. 8 and 9, and 50.125 inches on No. 10. Lima’s safe speeds for this group run from 15.1 miles an hour on No. 12 to 18.0 on the 70-3s. Nobody bought a Shay for that number. They bought it for the 25,000 to 32,000 pounds of tractive effort at a walking pace.

Nos. 8, 9, and 10 are the same class and almost the same machine. No. 10’s extra water, 3,420 gallons against 3,000, and its empty weight of 140,700 pounds are why it is the engine people mean when they call a West Side Shay the largest three-foot Shay Lima built. The class is 70-3. The claim is the weight.

Heisler roster

Charles L. Heisler’s engine puts two cylinders in a V under the boiler, ahead of the firebox, and a shaft down the center of the frame. The outboard axle of each truck is geared. Side rods connect it to the inboard axle. Stearns Manufacturing in Erie, Pennsylvania, built the four West Side engines. They were the railroad’s first real woods power, and they were smaller than the Shays that replaced them on the long haul. No. 1 was built as a wood burner and was an oil burner by the time of an early Tuolumne photograph. Two small Porter saddle tanks, Fido and Star, worked the mill yard in the early years. Star had come from San Francisco’s Ferries & Cliff House line.

No.	Shop	Built	Type	Agreed figures	Career
1	1028	1899	2-truck		To Swayne Lumber. Scrapped 1940
2	1040	1899	2-truck	A park-display card: 74,000 lb, 36-inch drivers, cylinders 15 x 12, 160 psi, 14,000 lb tractive effort	Named William H. Crocker on the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley. In West Side Memorial Park, Tuolumne, since 1960
3	1041	1899	2-truck	About 37 tons, 36-inch drivers, 14,000 lb tractive effort	Named Thomas S. Bullock. Standard-gauged in 1947 for the mill interchange with the Sierra, and put back to three-foot gauge about 1962. Roaring Camp No. 2 Tuolumne since 1962. Last commercial steam engine at the Tuolumne mill
4	1049	1901	2-truck		Scrapped 1950

Where they are in 2026

Tuolumne kept one engine. Heisler No. 2 has been in West Side Memorial Park since 1960.

Fish Camp, on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad, has the heavy end of the Shay roster. No. 10 has run there since 1966. No. 15 came in 1988 and is in service. No. 12 arrived back in California in February 2026, bought from the Colorado Railroad Museum, and is under restoration. Lima built it on April 21, 1926. The railroad hopes to steam it again once the restoration is finished.

Roaring Camp & Big Trees, at Felton, has three. Heisler No. 3 has been its No. 2, Tuolumne, since 1962, bought for $7,000, and it runs. Shay No. 7, Sonora, runs. Shay No. 14 left Golden on August 7, 2026, and is at Felton as Rosa. It last ran in 2004. The railroad’s account in September 2026 was that a place in the 2026 schedule was unlikely, and that test runs were the hope for 2027.

No. 8 has been the logging exhibit at the Moffat Road Railroad Museum in Granby, Colorado, since it arrived from Cañon City on October 8, 2021. It is a display engine. The museum has had the bell and whistle working. No. 9 belongs to the Midwest Central Railroad at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, still lettered West Side. It ran on the Georgetown Loop from 2012 into 2019 under a lease, and it is back in Iowa.

Nos. 1, 4, 5, and 6 were scrapped. No. 1 went to Swayne and was cut up in 1940. Nos. 4 and 5 went in 1950. No. 6’s Lima card lists a 1940 wreck and a 1950 scrapping.

Sources

Lima builder cards, shop numbers 730, 817, 2465, 2645, 2835, 3176, 3199, 3302, and 3315, as transcribed at shaylocomotives.com. Build dates, class, cylinders, drivers, pressure, gear ratio, tractive effort, empty weight, fuel and water, boiler diameter, ownership chain, and disposition. No. 5: the flume company had become West Side Lumber about the time the engine arrived. No. 10: built for Pickering, March 2, 1928. No. 12: Swayne No. 6, April 21, 1926, to West Side March 6, 1940, piston valves in 1929. Nos. 14 and 15: to West Side in 1939, from Hobart Estate, nee Sierra Nevada Wood & Lumber Nos. 10 and 9. No. 6: scrapped 1950
March 1908 railway-guide listing on this page. Hetch-Hetchy & Yosemite Valley Railway, J. R. Prince, secretary and treasurer, Tuolumne. Thirty-five miles to Thompson’s Meadows. Logging road. No freight or passenger service. Sixty-five miles to Yosemite Valley and 30 miles to Hetch Hetchy from the terminus
Tuolumne County Historical Society, railroad transportation. Sierra Railway into Tuolumne, February 1, 1900, the depot a few hundred yards from the mill. West Side’s mill and the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley as the narrow-gauge feeder. Finished lumber as Sierra traffic
U.S. Forest Service, West Side Rails: From Hull Creek to the Clavey River. Company in 1899, Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley in 1900 with more than 13 miles of rail by year’s end, West Side Lumber name in 1903, main line past 70 miles and within about 6 miles of Hetch Hetchy, more than 250 miles of temporary spur grades, grades kept below about 4.8 percent, Camp 45 at milepost 56 in 1950, Pickering bankruptcy in 1931, former owners back in 1934 and the railway name dropped, trucks to the reload landings by 1945, Camp Clavey closed and the mill taken down under Fibreboard, rail hardware salvaged by 1967
Moffat Road Railroad Museum, the 1922 Shay page, and Trains, David Lassen, August 4, 2021. No. 8 sold by the Royal Gorge Route, arrived in Granby October 8, 2021, still the logging exhibit in the 2026 season. Lima’s empty weight and tractive effort are the figures in the table
Roaring Camp Railroads, historical facts, and the ASME landmark note. Heisler No. 3 as Roaring Camp No. 2 Tuolumne, Stearns shop 1041, 1899, named Thomas S. Bullock, bought in 1962 for $7,000, about 37 tons, 36-inch drivers, 14,000 lb tractive effort, last commercial steam at Tuolumne. Shay No. 7 as Sonora. rgusrail.com display card for Heisler No. 2: 74,000 lb, 36-inch drivers, 15 x 12, 160 psi, 14,000 lb, named William H. Crocker, in the Tuolumne park since 1960
Trains, Lucas Iverson, September 24, 2026, interview with Melani Clark. Shay No. 14 left the Colorado Railroad Museum on August 7, 2026, for Roaring Camp. Last operated in 2004. Test runs anticipated in 2027. Named Rosa
Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad and this site’s February 16, 2026 account of Shay No. 12. Acquired from the Colorado Railroad Museum, hydrostatic test January 20, 2026, arrived at Fish Camp in February 2026, restoration alongside Nos. 10 and 15. Lima shop 3302, April 21, 1926, empty weight 113,500 lb
Heisler shop numbers 1028, 1040, 1041, and 1049, and the early Porter names Fido and Star, from the locomotive table long carried for this railroad, with 1041 confirmed on the Roaring Camp card. Cylinder cards for Nos. 1 and 4 were not opened. No. 3’s cylinder and pressure figures were left off because the owner’s page and a second list do not match

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