All aboard the Sugar Pine Railroad
By Kristen HovermanTraveling up to Yosemite, more than 50,000 people stop each year in Fish Camp in Madera County. The major attraction, just up the hill from Oakhurst, is an hour-long, scenic steam-train trip in the mountains on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad.
“We operate in the Sierra National Forest,” says Max Stauffer, owner. “It’s a real pretty ride.”
Stauffer’s parents began restoring the railroad in 1965, which was once the property of the Madera Sugar Pine Lumber Co. The lumber company logged 30,000 acres between the late 1800s up until 1931, he says. During that time, nearly 1.5 billion board feet of lumber was harvested from the forests, Stauffer says.
The lumber company came with the Gold Rush period to build houses, schools, bars and churches, Stauffer says. Shays, or steam locomotives designed by Ephraim Shay, were developed with special engines to accommodate sharp curves and steep cliffs and were a more reliable way of getting timber from the woods.
In Madera County, lumberjacks would cut the timber, transport it to the mill by railroad, then flumes carried the lumber to Madera, Stauffer says. He says it would take about 12 hours for bundles to reach the city.
Since its first run in the fall of 1967, the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad has been giving visitors a glimpse back in time with a narrated 4-mile train ride on the history of the area.
Thirty-minute narrated trips are offered on Jenny Railcars, trolley-like cars once used to provide transportation for logging and track repair crews, following the same route in between the scheduled steam trips.
“It’s all about offering folks a glimpse back in time,” Stauffer says.
Part of that glimpse includes using vintage Shay locomotive engines and old logging cars adapted to seat passengers. The Sugar Pine Railroad has two vintage engines on-site, which take approximately four hours to warm up. These engines, very much like the original Sugar Pine engines, include Shay number 10. Built in 1928, it was the largest narrow gauge Shay ever built, weighing about 84 tons. Shay number 15, the other vintage engine, was built in 1913 and weighs about 59 tons.
“It’s just relaxing,” says Scott McGhee, a frequent visitor and summer worker for the railroad. “You can’t replace the sound of a steam locomotive or being up in the mountains at 5,000 feet.”
McGhee says his family has made a yearly trip from the Bay Area to camp at Bass Lake and ride the Sugar Pine Railroad since he was a young boy.
Now he is a school teacher in the Bay Area and for the past 16 years has been spending five to six weeks of his summer working at the railroad. As part of the locomotive crew, he gets the engine ready in the morning and rides along on each steam trip run.
“There are several tourist trains in operation,” McGhee says. “It’s (Sugar Pine Railroad) unique. You’re actually traveling in a place where logging took place on a historic railroad with restored equipment. You see a part of Yosemite you wouldn’t normally see.”
While stopped at the Sugar Pine Railroad, visitors can also pan for gold, travel through the depot building for unique souvenirs and gifts, or through the Thornberry museum, an 1856 home moved up the hill from Oakhurst.
Every Saturday and Wednesday night in the summer, visitors can reserve a spot for the Moonlight Special, which includes a tri-tip dinner, evening entertainment and a train ride under the stars.