WASHINGTON’S SIMPSON TIMBER Day’sWork All in a BY ROBERT W. SCOTT/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR I
T’S A STORY THAT HAS BEEN PLAYED out day after day for nearly a centu- ry and a quarter on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Shelton’s Simpson Timber Railroad is a railroad that from outside glance is trapped in time. An anachronism alive in the chant of 567 diesel motors. Trains struggling against gravity to deliver raw logs and rough cut timber to and from mill sites.
Although a small shadow of its former glory of a network of trackwork spread all around the southern faces of the Olympic Mountains, today’s railroad operates just shy of ten miles between Dayton’s Mill No. 5 and the tidewater at Shelton. What it lacks in mileage, it makes up for in big time railroading. While neighboring railroad Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad (PSAP) sport
more modern four-axle power and six- axle run-through power, the diamonds in Shelton are shined with a quartet of switchers that are nearing their sixth decade of service plying the rails of the timber hauler. A skilled team of me- chanics keep engines, equipment and cars ready for service each day. The downtown rail corridor of Shel- ton is as crowded as any western or in-
OPPOSITE: Viewed through a water streak and tree branch cracked window, bundled up against a cold November rain, Simpson Timber railroader Nick Bosler contemplates the next switch move at a muddy Mill 5. TOP: Two switchers are working at the mill in Shelton with one shoving a cut of rough cut lumber into the plant while the other starts to move back towards the log loaders. The waterway in the foreground is Goldsborough Creek where it meets up with the salt water of Puget Sound.
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