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 Narrow
Gauge Railroads (March 2001)
 Between
1892 and 1951, there were two main narrow gauge railroads operating in
the El Dorado County ... the Diamond & Caldor Railroad and the Pino
Grande Railroad.
Diamond & Caldor Railroad
The Diamond & Caldor Railroad ran the eastern end of the narrow
gauge tracks near the town of Caldor (built by the California Door Company)
with a mill located on Dogtown Creek, a tributary of the Cosumnes River.
The California Door Company brought in the Shay Locomotive No. 4, built
in 1907 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Ohio. The Shay hauled lumber
between Diamond Springs and the Caldor Mill for 46 years. Caldor was
a small, but important town near Grizzly Flats. Along the route, a total
of 63 trestles were needed, including one 97 feet in length made of
steel. In October of 1904, nearly $400,000 and 18 months later, the
rails were completed. In 1953, since most of the logs were being brought
from Caldor by truck, the company decided to remove the tracks and sell
the railroad equipment. The old sawmill at Caldor is a ghost town today,
30 miles southeast of Diamond Springs.
Shay No. 4 (named after its designer Efrom Shay)
was given to the County by Diamond and Caldor in 1954. Today, the Diamond
& Caldor narrow gauge locomotive Shay No. 4 resides at the El Dorado
County Historical Museum on Placerville Drive. The El Dorado Western
Railway Foundation is now restoring the Shay back to its original condition.
Pino Grande Railroad
The Pino Grande Railroad traveled along the narrow gauge track through
the Georgetown Divide area. These narrow gauge railroads hauled vast
amounts of Ponderosa and Sugar Pine timber through the rugged terrain
of the Divide as well as other parts of El Dorado County.
In 1892 the American Land and Lumber Co., later
to be the Michigan-California Lumber Co., brought in the first locomotives
to run on narrow gauge track through the canyons of the Divide. Trestles
were built around curves in the mountains and across canyons. The little
locomotives that ran the rails of the Michigan-California Lumber Co.
were mostly Shays, small steamers usually weighing around 65,000 pounds,
but built to pull the heaviest loads. There were other types of locomotives
used, the Heisler and the Climax, but the Shay was the workhorse of
the Michigan-California Lumber Company.
Shay No. 2, the oldest engine in the Michigan-Cal
line, retired in 1951 and is now resting outside the mill in Camino
where narrow gauge railroad buffs visit it often. Today, on the Georgetown
Divide, the Canyon Creek Narrow Gauge Railroad Association has planned
to resurrect the old Pino Grande narrow gauge railroad that was owned
and operated by Michigan-California Lumber Co.
Caldor's railroad logging heyday from 1884 until 1964
What is a narrow gauge railroad? The
narrow gauge track used by the railroad was 3 feet wide, whereas the
standard gauge track was 4 feet 8 1/2 inches wide. Some cities in California,
as they became prosperous in the early 1900's, were building railroads
and using the narrow gauge, but in the end the wider track won out.
The United States Government standardized the wider track across the
country and there are only a few narrow gauge railroads left in the
United States today.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads
were built by English ex-patriates.
Why did the English build
them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same
people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they
used.
Why did "they" use
that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used
the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used
that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have
that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any
other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long
distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted
roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were
built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever
since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else
had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots
were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter
of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge
of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for
an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live
forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder
who came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial
Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back
ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.
Local Note:
Did you know? ... The El Dorado "Bike Trail" stretches
from Mosquito Road near Hwy. 50 to Smith Flat Road, largely following
the path of the old railroad tracks that ran from Placerville to the
Michigan-California Lumber Co. in Camino ...
Source:
Mountain Democrat Archives
Georgetown, California, Canyon Creek Narrow Gauge Railroad
United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest
Region, Visiting the Heritage Sites of the Pacific Southwest Region [ http://www.r5.fs.fed.us/heritage/heritagelegend.html]
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