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| Volume XXXIX, Number 2 |
Summer, 2004
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| The South Bend Flyer's last run | |
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| Volume XXXIX, Number 2 |
Summer, 2004
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| The South Bend Flyer's last run | |
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| The
Sou'wester |
| ISSN #0038-4984
Copyright, 2004, by the Pacific County Historical Society. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the Society's Editorial Board. The Sou'wester is a quarterly publication of the
Pacific County Historical Society and Museum. The Pacific County
Historical Society is a non-profit 501(C)(3) organization in South Bend,
Washington.
In addition to the Sou'wester, the Society publishes a quarterly newsletter for its members and operates the Pacific County Historical Society Museum in South Bend, Washington.
Design and electronic page layout by Charles B. Summers,
South Bend, Washington.
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| The
Sou'wester Summer Issue, 2004
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Last month I was cleaning and inspecting our museum displays, and happened to notice that the newspaper story about the last passenger train to South Bend on exhibit credited an Allan deLay as the photographer. Since the illustrated story appeared in The Oregonian, and assuming that he might be from Portland I contacted the Oregon Historical Society to inquire if Mr. deLay’s negatives had ended up somewhere they could be found. Susan Seyl, the Society’s photo librarian, responded that they had only a few of Mr. deLay’s photos, but that he was still alive, and might be able to help me. Considering the passage of fifty years, I had not even occurred to me that the photographer might be alive. In the process of looking up Mr. deLay’s phone number I discovered that not only was he alive (age 89), but that he is a championship swimmer in his age group. |
The Northern Pacific Railroad's Willapa Harbor branch line, 1893-9193. A connection was made with the N.P.R.R. mainline between Tacoma and Portland at Chehalis. N.P. trains for South Bend originated in Centralia. |
| When I reached Allan deLay by
phone, I was delighted to find him friendly and helpful. Yes, he
told me, he had saved all his negatives, and it was very likely the ones
he took on the Oregonian assignment could be found. When he called
back half an hour later to tell me he had located over 100 negatives taken
of one of the last mixed (passenger and freight) trains on the Willapa
Harbor branch, I could not believe my luck. Allan offered to print
any of the images I wanted for the cost of materials.
Allan deLay was a professional photographer most of his life, retiring during the late 1970s. He is active in the Boy Scouts, and, I learned, plays the musical saw. He told me that he recalled missing his ride to Centralia for the railroad photo shoot, and had to take a charter a plane to get to Lewis County on time that day. I mentioned to Allan that I might also want to use the Oregonian story that had accompanied his photos in 1954, and he encouraged me to contact his friend Al McCready, the reporter. I found Al’s number, and called, but was sad to discover that I he had passed away last year. If I had only thought of pursuing this earlier! Oh well, I should be thankful I have had a chance to meet a truly wonderful gentleman, and outstanding photographer. Thanks also to Jim Fredrickson for research assistance. Some publication projects seem to drag on for years, taking longer than I could possibly imagine. Then there are the times an article comes together in a matter of days. I hope you enjoy this photo story as much as I have enjoyed working upon it. Bruce Weilepp, Editor |
| End of an Era: The South Bend Flyer
Lumber Tycoon ‘Parlor Car’ Era Fades To Past As Willapa’s Mixed-Train-Daily Drops Coach By Al McCready
One more “mixed train daily,” a
quaint carryover from the old days when branch lines flourished along every
mainline western railroad, has vanished from the timetable.
Staff Writer, The Oregonian March 21, 1954 South Bend, Wash. Last week the final remnant of the once-flourishing passenger service on the Northern Pacific’s Willapa Harbor branch line passed out of existence, mourned only by rail fans and old timers who remember the boom days when the air between Centralia and South Bend was full of the whine of mill saws and the smell of new-sawn fir lumber. Cabooses Provide Seats N.P. train No.596-591 (Daily Ex. Sun. Mixed) made its last round trip Friday, and was replaced on the run by a regular freight train. Lack of passenger patronage doomed the mixed train, successor to the proud South Bend Flyer of a generation ago. Ironically, so many people turned out to ride the train on its final trip that the N.P. was forced to roll two cabooses out of its Centralia yards to hook on behind the regular coach. Sixty passenger, including 73 year-old henry Dunckley, who stood on the Centralia station platform and watched the first South Bend passenger train pull out in 1893, were aboard for No. 596-591’s farewell run. On the return trip, there were 93, making a total patronage greater than the line normally has in a month. The high school band at Pe Ell welcomed the train and ladies of the town gave Veteran Conductor R.B. Hedrick a boutonniere and a cake in honor of the occasion. Route Tapped Lush Forests The Mountains between Centralia and the sea were wild and unsettled when the N.P. pushed its rails over the summit of the coast range to South Bend in 1893, opening up lush stands of timber. Sawmill towns sprang up like mushrooms all along the 54-mile right of way, and the railroad’s passenger and freight business grew hugely. By 1907, the N.P. was running two full-sized passenger trains each way along the line, serving 29 communities. In one heady period, from 1912 to 1918, there was even a parlor car where lumber tycoons could loll back on plush seats to smoke their stogies and watch the faller assault grand firs with crosscut saws and double bitted axes. Ghost Towns Increase But by the late 20s the forests along the Willapa Harbor branch were pretty well cut down. Mills closed down, one by one and residents of the towns moved on to new logging bonanzas. There weren’t so many paying passengers to places like Adna, Ceres, Dryad, Pe Ell, and Lebam, and passenger trains were replaced by gasoline motor cars. By the mid-30s, the one-time boomtowns of McCormick, Globe and Walville had turned into ghost towns, and the motor cars were replaced by a lone passenger car behind a way freight. Often the coach made the round trip with no paying passengers at all. Seldom were there more than two or three. Conductor Hedrick can’t recall when he had more than seven riders in the recent years. There was a little flurry at the ticket window in Centralia depot when the word got around that the mixed train daily to South Bend would make its last run March 19. On one of its final runs last week, the little train took aboard 14 passengers. Only two, though, were honest-to-goodness travelers. The rest were N.P. officials of railroad fans who frankly paid their $2.54 plus 38 cents tax for the one last round trip ride on the South Bend Flyer. After Conductor Hedrick shepherded them aboard No. 1195, the elderly combination baggage and passenger coach, Engineer Ed Malloy opened the throttle. Out onto the main line rolled the locomotive, a light duty 2-8-2 Consolidation [sic], followed by one empty gondola car and the coach. |
| Trestle Foils Loggers
Old 1195 wears on her sides the same horizontal olive green bands that the most modern N.P. streamline cars display. But inside she shows here age, with elegant brass oil lamps, green plush seats and stained-glass clerestory windows. Up front in the baggage compartment is the potbellied coal stove, and in the vestibule is a circulating hot water heater fired with coke. “We used to have a lot of trouble with loggers trying to beat us out of the fare,” chucked Hedrick as the train chugged along. “I was a brakeman on this run in 1908 when Guy Wentworth was conductor. He used to start at one end of the train and begin collecting fares. But the stops were so close together he couldn’t finish up before the next station, and the loggers would jump off and run down the cars and get on behind him. “He fooled them, though. He got the train to stop in the middle of the trestle at Claquato and stay there until he got all the fares. Anybody tried to hop off there, he would land in the Chehalis River. Old Villages Sleep As mile after mile of track went under the wheels the train passed towns that once bustled with activity but now are sleepily silent. ATR Littell the depot has been moved across the road and turned into a service station. Only a few houses remain at Adna, Ceres, Dryad and Doty. Meskill Pit, once the site of a state penitentiary stockade where convicts made little rocks out of big ones, now is deserted. At Pe Ell the train paused briefly while crewmen put off an express shipment and accepted a raisin pie, gift of the cook on a work train parked on a siding. Up the grade then, the train puffed to the summit at Pluvius, where it reputedly rains more than seems meteorologically possible. Settler Names Ridge Author Stewart Holbrook, in his book The Far Corner, says the place got its name because a pioneer settler declared it poured for 362 days one year, and the skies were clouded over considerably the other three. The grade is 1.5 per cent or better on the approaches to Pluvius, and the engines can only haul 14 cars over the summit. Longer trains have to go over the hump in sections. Down the coastal side of the range went the train, past acres of tall, moss-grown stumps. Nowadays logs are so valuable that trees are cut off close to the ground. Fifty years ago loggers preferred to stand on springboards and swing their crosscuts above the flare of the butt where it doesn’t take so many strokes to topple a tree. ‘Mabel’ Spelled Backwards In 1904 there was a daily freight train operating to Frances, but this time N.P. 596-591 sailed right through without stopping. At Lebam (that’s Mabel spelled backward) Conductor Hedrick flowed his daily custom and leaned out the vestibule door to wave at 17-year-old Doleres Hudziak. She used to run out tot he tracks to wave back, but can’t do that since polio struck her down two years ago. The only industrial activity remaining on the Willapa Harbor branch between Chehalis and Raymond is at Nalpee, where there’s a log loading company. The train stopped here to drop off its empty gondola car. Civic Leader prefer Plan At Raymond, the train was greeted by Leslie Raymond, the man for whom the city is named. He was the N.P.’s agent there from 1891, when construction began on the branch line, until 1897. [editor’s note: L.V. Raymond was an express agent for the railroad during those years, but traveled with the train (read more about that here from the Sou'wester Special Annual Edition for 2002). The city of Raymond did not exist before 1902.] Civic officials in South Bend turned out in a body to meet the train. Mayor Karl Wonhoff was there, along with Postmaster Dan Coulter, D.J. Gillies, and the chamber of commerce president and secretary, C.D. Davis and V.F. Kycek. Were they angry that the passenger service was ending after 60 years? Not a bit. The change, they pointed out, will mean better freight service for Raymond and South Bend because the daily train no longer will have to adjust its schedule with Portland-Seattle passenger trains, and can bring Willapa Harbor express shipments earlier in the business day. |
| Mister, that’s the last train
Editor’s note: The following editorial appeared in The Oregonian with the other stories in this issue. Although our clipping does not include the writer’s name, I strongly suspect Stewart Holbrook wrote the piece. Holbrook devoted several pages in his book The Far Corner to the communities along the Willapa Harbor branch line. His colorful style made him one of the most popular history writers of his day. The few volumes that are still in print (including Far Corner) still serve as an easy to read introduction to Pacific Northwest history. Come Saturday and the last passenger train will make its last run over the Northern Pacific’s South Bend branch in Washington. It is tragic news, yet it will startle no one, for we have become too used to these disasters, fruits of the motor age. Only recently, we have seen the last passenger train to Astoria, the last to Coos Bay. The process has been going on for a quarter of a century. It is evident that the pattern of railroad decay begins with the branches. Passenger service is reduced; then eliminated. Often the freight service follows the vanishing trains. Then the branch is abandoned, the rails pulled up, the ties burned, while the kindly alder and fireweed attempt to hide the naked lie of a surviving sign that says to Look Out for the Engine. |
 Northern Pacific Railroad's mixed train No. 596-591 poses on siding at Centralia before starting out on one of its final runs. Dwindling business forces the railroad to abandon passenger service on its Willapa Harbor branch line from Centralia to South Bend. Photographer Alan deLay was hired by The Oregonian to document the train a week before the final run. The actual last train ran on March 19, 1954. Mixed passenger and freight trains were once common on branch lines around America. Although they ran on a timetable schedule, the pace was slower than regular passenger trains. Departure and arrival times at Centralia were coordinated with mainline passenger trains for the convenience of travelers. The rest of the trip was leisurely enough to accommodate the switching of freight cars along the way. Allan deLay photo. |
| Though the South Bend branch
will continue as a freight hauler, its life really ceased with the last
passenger train; or so it will seem to us who rode the branch when the
cars were four and even five and were a handsome dark red, and the locomotive
gleamed like a great black diamond. You could have your breakfast
then at the depot dining room in Centralia, and mount the South Bend Flyer
on the sidetrack. The badge on the conductor’s cap shone like silver,
to match the vast chain that spanned his vest. The trainman announced
that this was the train for Chehalis, for Raymond, South Bend, and all
w-a-a-y points.
The way points were many, and mostly as busy as could be at making lumber: Littell, Dryad and Doty; Pe ElI, which turned out more crossarms than Western Union could use; then more mills at McCormick, Walville, Globe and Lebam. Come, call their names slowly, and do not forget the flagstops like Adna and Ceres and Frances, and Nallpee, and Menlo, where poor Willie Keil, he of the Aurora colonists - and God rest his soul - lies beneath a cedar on a farmhouse hill. And blow once for unique Pluvius, whose founder said it was rained upon 362 days a year, every year, and the other three were ‘cloudy as night.’ The metropolis of the branch was Raymond, where the sea gulls gathered at the depot when they saw Billy, who met all the trains, coming with his hand-truck; and a moment later the Flyer’s whistle let go at Willapa, telling all she was on time and rolling fast, while the wild birds wheeled and screamed and the town characters came to see the cars come in. It was a great moment, repeated continuously for nigh sixty years. All who ride that last train or see it pass now will be as dated as their grand-parents, who wept to see the last stagecoach, just before the Iron Horse took over. One hopes that the Flyer passes her last whistle-post with the steam dome rocking and the magic sound pealing out in volume to be heard by ships at sea, and by cougars on the mountain. And may the echoes reach that Valhalla where live the shades of the train crew who rode first over the South Bend branch when the world was young, the skies were blue, and Steam was king. |
 Engineer Malloy at the throttle of W-1 Class Mikado type #1682, built in 1910. Steam locomotives were about to disappear from the Northern Pacific Railroad when the last mixed train ran to South Bend. Allan deLay photo. |
 Fireman Harry Shephard adjusts the power stoker for efficient combustion of the N.P. RR’s low-grade coal. Allan deLay photo. |
 In his half of Combine Car No. 1195, Dewey Stansfield didn’t have much to do on the trip from Centralia to South Bend. There wasn’t any baggage and only a few pieces of express. Coal stove came in handy on winter runs. Allan deLay photo. |
 R. Bruce Hedrick catches up on paperwork while the train rolls along. Conductors are the real “captain” of the train. They were (and still are) responsible for collecting fares, as well as keeping track of rolling stock and maintaining the schedule. Allan deLay photo. |
 Mixed train No. 596-591 makes a brief stop in Pe Ell on the way to South Bend. Once a bustleing mill town, by 1954 Pe Ell had already become the quiet crossroads community it is today. Allan deLay photo. |
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 Puffing engine hauls the short train up a 1.5% grade at Pluvius; summit of the coast range on the 54-mile run. Pluvius retained a passing track to allow reassembling long trains that had been separated into two sections due to the steep grade. Several private logging spurs departed from the N.P. line near here at one time. By 1954, trucks had replaced railroads for logging purposes. Logs were either trucked to the local mill, or reloaded into railroad cars for more distant mills. The narrow highway bridge spanning the tracks at this point still stands in 2004 as a WPA era monument. Allan deLay photo. |
 Frances was once a busy mill town located at the foot of the steepest grade on the Willapa Harbor Line. To speed long trains when the line was busy a helper engine could be stationed at Frances. By 1954, the large depot and much of the town had disappeared, leaving a small water tank, modest passenger shelter, and a passing siding. Allan deLay photo. |
 H. W. Hardy, N.P.RR ticket agent at Centralia enjoys a last nostalgic trip to South Bend with his daughters Joanne and Joyce. Allan deLay photo. |
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 Conductor R. B. Hedrick checks the ornate brass oil lamps in the combination baggage and passenger coach. The car was also equipped with electric lights, but no dynamo to light them. Combine No. 1195 was originally of wooden, trussrod construction, she was upgraded with steel sheathing prior to service on the Willapa Harbor train. A venerable survivor of many thousands of service miles, her last days were not far off. Allan deLay photo. |
 A small crowd greets the soon-to-be discontinued train at Raymond. Town founder L. V. Raymond was one of the dignitaries present who could recall the first passenger trains to Willapa Harbor 60 years before. Mr. Raymond was a traveling express agent for the railroad when he met Stella Johnson. The two were married in 1897 and settled not far from the N.P. tracks before starting the town which now bears his name. Allan deLay photo. |
 Engineer Ed Malloy takes advantage of the stop in Raymond to lubricate his locomotive’s moving parts. Allan deLay photo. |
 Automobiles replaced trains as soon as public roads connected Willapa Harbor to the outside world. Allan deLay photo. |
 Conductor Hedrick checks his watch with Engineer Ed Malloy before leaving Centralia. N.P. veterans, they were assigned to a freight run on the branch after the end of passenger service. “Now I don’t have to wear a uniform,” said Hedrick, but his smile was a bit wistful. Allan deLay photo. |
 A delegation of city officials and businessmen turned out to greet the “almost last” train when it backed into South Bend. The depot shown here had previously served as the South Bend freight depot. By 1954, South Bend’s original passenger depot was no longer in use, and may have already been torn down. The building shown here survived until the end of freight service, and was used for storage until being destroyed by fire in 1986. Allan deLay photo. |
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 Jars of Willapa Bay oysters being shipped by railroad. Baggageman Stansfield keeps careful records of the freight shipments. 60 years before, L. V. Raymond was doing the same job. Allan deLay photo. |
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 Taking water on the train turning “wye” in South Bend, Eklund Park is visible behind the tower. At one time South Bend had a fairly complete engine terminal, including a turntable. The turntable was replaced with a wye track some time in the early 20th Century. Soon after these photos were taken diesel locomotives replaced steam. Rail freight service to South Bend continued until some time in the late 1980s. In 1993, the last train made a round trip from Chehalis to Raymond and back ending 100 years of service to Willapa Harbor. The tracks were subsequently removed, and conversion to a recreational trail is currently under way. Allan deLay photo. |
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