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Southern Pacific Shasta District,
Oregon Division

Sunset at Andesite, 1991: Wx4 staff seems to recall that this tank car, used by the U.S. Forest Service as a water storage tank, was a then-recent replacement for a circa 1905 SP car that had occupied the same spot. But then, Wx4 staff also recalls that Southern Pacific was a subsidiary of Dunkin Donuts. Anybody have a photo of the previous car? A full likeness of the above car is located at the SP M/W page.

Mt Shasta, California - home of Wx4's satellite facility
(Well no, not the depot, but nearby anyway.)
(above) SP's Alma Street, Mt. Shasta Freight Station in March, 1980; (below) Train 19, the Klamath, arriving at Mt. Shasta's passenger depot, located diagonally across Alma Street from the freight station, circa 1958 , with Black Butte in the background. (photographer unknown)

Shortly after Wx4 staff recorded the photograph, the freight station was moved across the McCloud River Railroad main track to the corner of Alma and Mt. Shasta Blvd. (out of photo to left) and enlarged into a two story commercial building. The passenger structure eventually wound up as a still-extant guest house at a Buddhist monastery up the hill from the former Deetz siding.

The boxcar in the picture below is sitting on the aforementioned McCloud Main, where in 1984 a different boxcar was located at the right edge of the photo. This latter boxcar, containing all of Wx4 staff's wordly goods, and had made the trip up from San Jose's College Park Yard, and despite an abundance of Do Not Hump placards (scan of of one we used at left), had gone over the Roseville hump anyway, demolishing a cheap dresser. We unloaded it right there on the McCloud Main, which gave us a strange feeling of power.Ultimately, the placard itself became a subject of a short tale.

Below the lower photo is a 1928 Sanborn map showing the buildings' respective locations. Note that Walnut Street is now Mt. Shasta Blvd. The track on the northeast side of the Freight Station is the McCloud Main, which has terminated short of Alma since 1993.

(below) Wx4 still maintains satellite offices geographically west of Black Butte (background) and Upton siding (foreground). This overpass (or underpass, depending upon your existential leanings) on Old Stage Road has served not only as a conduit for Wx4's comings and goings, but also as the local teenage community's message board for as long as anyone can remember - the paint must be a couple of inches thick. To their credit, the local younsters have largely confined their creative forays to this one spot and sometimes have managed bits of near-fine art. Here, in 1993, SP's unique SD-45 rebuild #7399 displays a stellar example of SP Grunge Art.

Weed, California
Weed still had an open train order office and an assigned switch engine - Baldwin S-12 # 2115 - contained within its wye in June, 1970. Until the cessation of the Weed helpers, the locale also boasted a "Round House", as shown in the 1928 Sanborn map, below. Today, the depot and Baldwin are long gone, and the wye is now Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad territory.


(below) - hand-drawn SPINS-like map showing industry spotting locations and track capacities. We cannot pinpoint the decade in which it was drawn, but whomever the 'cartographer' was, he was familiar with pre-1927 designations, such as "old Klamath Main", and "Coach trk." (click on image for enlargement)

Additioal Shasta Division maps, including Weed and Mt. Shasta: See the Shasta Division Engineering Maps page, which has links to (as of mid 2025) about 75 "Station" and other maps, scanned from originals that range up to eight feet long. Also, you'll find several score Shasta and Oregon Division employee and public timetables on Wx4's Historic Southern Pacific Maps & Timetables page.

Dunsmuir, California

(below) milepost 322, next to Dunsmuir's "Mallet House", Fall 1993

For helper engineers "Doctor" Mike Espinoza, Double-A Marske, and ever-affable Al Grant:
'The Help' at Dunsmuir, March, 1980
Rest in peace, boys. - Hawaii 5




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