Prototype Interest 2 - Selecting an Era

The second area of consideration in Prototype Interests is Selecting an Era. In John Armstrong’s Creative Model Railroad Design, he identifies eight ages of American railroading:

1830 THE FIRST AGE   – Early invention and experimentation of railroad equipment and operations
1855 THE SECOND AGE – The first attempts at standardization
1880 THE THIRD AGE – The beginnings of heavy railroading
1900 THE FOURTH AGE – Clean-lined experimentation
1920 THE FIFTH AGE - Standard Railroading
1940 THE SIXTH AGE – Steams Finest Hour and first generation diesels
1960 THE SEVENTH AGE - The low nose, hy-cube 100 ton rainbow
1980 THE EIGHTH AGE - Rationalization and revitalization

Armstrong’s spreadsheet includes seven elements associated with each era: Locomotive , Passenger car, Freight car, Special devices, Track and Structure, Signal and Communications, and Milestones and Sidelights. Armstrong identified within those elements railroad activities or equipment invented or introduced, activities as required by rule or law, its date of universal application, or what was considered obsolete.
 
Selection of your layout's era would be based on your particular interest in the era or elemental activities within the era.

Having established a location for my freelanced railroad it was time to select an era. I was fortunate to have a wealth of information available to me for consideration of an era - numerous books have been written about logging in the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Logging Conference published a monthly journal (I enclose those sources at the bottom of the page).Using these resources I discovered several items of interest.

First, in the United States logging began in New England, where forests were cleared, often carelessly, to make room for the country’s first towns and farms and to provide lumber for buildings, fuel, and furniture. Once thought to be a virtually inexhaustible resource, these forests were nearly depleted by the mid-1800s, and logging companies thus began to spring up in the Midwest, especially in the 'North Woods' of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. By the 1890s much of these vast midwestern pine forests also were cleared, forcing lumbermen to look to the South and to the far Northwest for new regions of forested land. 

Second, the US Army had established as part of the WWI effort an organization called the Spruce Production Division - and in the 1917 - 1918 tune period there were 13 railroads built in the region with 173 miles of track laid to harvest Sitka spruce for the Army Air Corp aircraft production and for trench warfare in general. As an ex-Army guy this was an intriguing bit of history.

Third, as I was researching the logging industry in the Olympic peninsula it became clear to me that the 1900 - 1920's were the high points of the lumber industry in Grays Harbor, and the Great Depression make a permanent dent in the industry. Many logging companies were incorporated, cleared timber lands and went out of business.

Railroading in the woods was primitive in the early years. The 1920's saw the Pacific Coast Shay, the Heisler and Climax locomotives as major motive power. The 1930's saw 2-8-0 Consolidated and articulated locomotives (2-6-6-2, 2-8-8-2 ) moving logging trains. The 1940's saw the inroads of  dieselization in the logging industry - trucks hauling timber out of cut areas to reload sites, and then to the locomotives hauling those loads to sawmills and interchanges. It wasn't until the mid 1950's that dieselization was completed. I was most interested in the post -depression logging industry.

Fourth, in the Pacific Logging Conference journal I found several articles about studies done on the subject of electrifying logging lines. From there I found the Red River Railroad - an electrified lumber line in California! Even closer to my location, Oregon had a number of interurban lines providing freight services between logging railroads, sawmills, and Class I railroads.

Why summer 1955? Several reasons:

• All three of the Class I railroads in the Grays Harbor area were running 1st Generation diesels.

• The Great Northern Railroad, the Milwaukee Road, the Chicago South Shore and South Bend, and the Piedmont and Northern were still using electrification in daily operations.
  

• Several of the logging lines in the Pacific Northwest, and one in particular in the Grays Harbor area were still using steam locomotives.

• Post WW2 steel sheathed freight cars were in general use by the Class 1 railroads. Wood single and double sheathed freight cars of the 1920's were still in use by a number of Class 2 and Class 3 railroads regionally allowing me a wider variety of revenue cars to model in service. 

References

A Northwest Rail Pictorial by Warren W. Wing

Logging By Rail by Robert D. Turner

Logging Railroads in Skagit County by Dennis Blake Thompson

Vancouver Island Railroads by Robert D. Turner

Spruce Production Division

Spruce Production Division Camp and Spruce Production Division Camp 1 - by Craig Magnuson

The Timberman (1921-1922) - Google EBooks