As noted yesterday, the Antiplanner is in San Antonio today. But before leaving Oregon, I visited the Sumpter Valley Railroad for the fall photographer’s special. The Sumpter Valley Railroad once carried gold and timber between Prairie City and Baker, Oregon, but shut down in 1947. With help from the Union Pacific, local enthusiasts rebuilt a few miles of it in the 1970s and began tourist operations in 1976.
Sunrise in McEwen. Click for a larger photo.
The group operates two steam locomotives, the Sumpter Valley 19 and the Eccles Lumber Company 3. Eccles Lumber was a logging railroad that fed into the Sumpter Valley Railroads; both were founded by David Eccles, an Ogden entrepreneur, in the late nineteenth century. After the railroads shut down, the 3 was used as a stationary boiler by Boise Cascade, while the 19 went to the White Pass and Yukon, which later donated it back to the restoration group.
