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Sumpter
Valley
Railway
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Click On Any Photo To See Large Version Nearly all of today's excursion and museum railroads operate on
abandoned rights-of-way. The Sumpter Valley Railway, located 26
miles southwest of Baker City Oregon, on U.S. Highway 7, has a
unique characteristic over all of these railroads. We have built the
railroad ourselves.
The restoration railroad began on January 4, 1971, when the Sumpter Valley Railroad Restoration was incorporated under the laws of Oregon as a non-profit operating tourist railroad. This was only 24 years after the original railway had stopped operations. The people in the county never could quite forget the "Stump Dodger". Later the Sumpter Valley Railway district was nominated and accepted for the National Register of Historic Places and the little railroad came back. The new organization made arrangements with the Edward Hines Lumber Company for leasing the old right-of-way westward from the county road above McEwen to Sumpter. The right-of-way was acquired under a ten year lease. Another urgent order of business was to retrieve any part of the old rolling stock. Old locomotive boilers were pulled in from where they had been used as boilers or furnaces. Some cattle cars were found rotting in pastures. These were rescued for restoration. An obvious conclusion was that in order to run a railroad it takes a locomotive of some kind. This being true, the group looked about for a vintage narrow gauge locomotive, hopefully from the Sumpter Valley Railroad. It was found. The Boise Cascade Corporation had an old W.H. Eccles Lumber Company locomotive located at its Cascade, Idaho, sawmill. This was the two truck Heisler number 3, purchased new by the Eccles Lumber Company in 1915, and operated on the Sumpter Valley Railroad as a logging engine. Boise Cascade sold the locomotive to the Restoration group. Years before, Boise Cascade had steamed it up from time to time for use as a stand-by boiler for the sawmill at Cascade. At the time of the sale, the dejected engine sat aging in a shed, waiting for its renewed glory. In faded lettering on the tender was its old boss, the "W. H. Eccles Lbr. Co." In the fall of 1971, Union Pacific Railroad transported the 40 ton Heisler from Cascade to Baker Oregon, free of charge. This was the first of many feats of generosity the Union Pacific Railroad would show to our small railroad. The Union Pacific Railroad and its employees of the Portland Division have always been there for us when help was needed. After many years of disuse the old #3 was not in running condition. Ellingson Lumber Company of Baker donated property in town for a repair shed. Keep in mind that the volunteer work crew had very little work experience on a steam locomotive, specially one born in 1915. A Heisler technical manual was obtained from Floyd Carpenter, SVRy member and former general superintendent on the original Sumpter Valley Railway. After four years of sweat and tears, rehabilitating was completed. In 1975, volunteer bulldozing leveled two thousand feet of road
bed, ready for track laying. A location for the Dredge Depot (later
renamed to McEwen Depot) and parking lot was scraped and leveled.
Track laying soon began.
In June 1976 the Heisler turned her wheels for the first time under steam -- onto a low-boy trailer for her ride from Baker to her new home on the Sumpter Valley Railway. After a six year struggle the Sumpter Valley Railway was back in business. The official ribbon cutting ceremony opening the railroad was July 4, 1976. During the next several years, the railroad operated on a small stretch of rail of a few thousand feet. But great advances were being made by the all volunteer, poorly funded group. It was learned in 1976 that two original SVRy 2-8-2 locomotives were available from the White Pass & Yukon Railroad in Skagway, Alaska. Engine numbers 19 and 20 had been sold to the WP&Y in 1940, and operated there until retirement in 1960. The SVRy was able to purchase the two engines for a dollar each. But the freight costs to haul these engines back home would exceed $25,000. Funds were raised all over the Baker and Sumpter Valleys, and the engines were home again. Another big donation from the Union Pacific Railroad came to us in 1977 when a 20 mile branch line from Vale to Brogan, Oregon, was donated to the SVRy. Only condition attached was the materials were "as is, where is". It took many months of volunteer work to haul the rail, ties, spikes and plates to the Sumpter Valley. During the 1980's track laying continued, albeit slowly, toward Sumpter. More equipment was obtained through various means, including the only SVRy tank car and two cabooses, numbers 3 and 5. In 1985, a Union Pacific branch line between Athena and Weston in northeast Oregon ceased operation. The UPRR offered the rails to our organization if we would dismantle and transport the two and one-half miles of 80 pound rails including spikes, bars, plates, nuts, bolts and ties. In 1988 the railroad received a big boost from the only surviving family member of railroad founder David Eccles. His daughter Emma Eccles Jones, 93, made a generous donation to fund expansion efforts. She wrote the railroad a letter reminiscing about taking a private train to the end of line with her mother to pick huckleberries. Her grant enabled the purchase of a SVRy wooden clerestory coach, #20. Built in 1890, this coach had been owned by a private individual in western Oregon. After painstaking interior restoration work by SVRy member Eric Wunz, the car was placed back into service in 1991. The car was named "Em Eccles Jones" in honor of her. In 1991, the railroad finally arrived in the town of Sumpter. Today the railroad is 5.1 miles long. A state park is under construction, in which the SVRy will be prominent. The SVRy is currently working on building a "balloon track" in and through Sumpter, which will include two bridges in order to cross the Powder River. The SVRy has about 450 members across the USA, Canada, and Europe, with about 90 active volunteers working on track, rolling stock, buildings, and of course operating the steam trains. Because the work is never ending, this story will be continued...
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