Logging by Rail: The British Columbia Story

Updated edition 2010. Sixth Printing! Logging by Rail is the dramatic and fascinating story of the logging railroad era in British Columbia when the whistles of the steam locomotives echoed through the mountains and forests of the West. It is the story both of the men who worked on the railroads and of the machines they ran, maintained, depended upon, cursed and loved. It is a story of ingenuity, invention, determination, and hard work. The setting is the vast forests of British Columbia and the remote, isolated logging railroads that were once a vital part of the forest industry. From small beginnings in the 1880s logging lines expanded rapidly through the early 1900s. By the 1920s, the height of the steam era in the woods, there were hundreds of miles of timber-hauling railroads. The Depression and World War II brought more changes to the logging railroads and bv the 1950s, trucking was taking over log-hauling in the woods as the timber accessible to railroads dwindled. As the steam era ended only two major logging railroads were modernized with diesels. Railroad logging was a powerful technology that was used to change forever the landscape and forests in large areas of British Columbia. First-hand accounts from men who worked for a lifetime on the logging trains are interwoven with the intriguing history of the railroads and their equipment. Here is an interesting and detailed picture of the Shay, Climax, and Heisler geared locomotives, the Baldwin and Porter rod engines, the donkey engines and skidders, the speeders and rolling stock that gave logging railroads their unique character. Hundreds of classic photographs capture these machines and the lines they ran on, with their fantastic trestles and their twisting, climbing grades. Logging by Rail is at once a carefully documented history and a sensitive portrait of railroad logging in British Columbia. This 300+ page book contains over 500 outstanding, select photographs, including 20 pages in full colour, specially prepared maps and plans together with detailed text, bibliography and index. Railway/History, 326 pp, 8½ × 11, 500+ b/w and colour photos ISBN 1-55039-065-1, paper, $39.95