MIXED TRAIN DAILY By Lucius Beebe With photographs by C. M. Clegg, Jr. Howell - North Copyright 1947 pages 259 - 263 from chapter IN FIELDS OF ASPHODEL Webmasters Note: It must be noted, there are several glowing errors in Mr. Beebe's account of the life of the YVRR. But, it is a colorful account! xxxxx When, in August of 1945, and with the approval of a complacent Interstate Commerce Commission, the Yosemite Valley Railroad closed its affairs, the circumstance was established in the minds of almost everyone familiar with the road as a classic example of premeditated and incontestable corporate murder. The Yosemite Valley was at the time of its abandonment every inch a going concern, a vital and active railroad and one with almost illimitable financial potentialities In the immediate future. In just what manner the interests which were to benefit most directly and financially by its closing were able to prevail upon the management to effect its abandonment is a form of speculation which may not be profitably pursued. xxxxx The fact stands that, at the time service was finally suspended, revenue business had increased over that of the previous year by a flat one hundred percent so that crews were called for freight runs six days a week instead of three; the end of the war held promise of an almost immediate resumption of the road's lucrative prewar passenger and tourist traffic, and a number of heavy industries to be entirely dependent upon the railroad's service were being planned at Merced Falls and elsewhere along its right of way. The motive power and rolling stock, installations and equipment of every sort were in first-rate operating condition and the railroad, had its demise not been shamefully and perhaps even criminally devised, had nothing but a handsomely upholstered future to look to. xxxxx Certainly the deliberately contrived and unabashedly instrumented killing of a profitable and going railroad is no new thing and there will be parallel examples of ferrocide in the future. But the entirely shameless way in which the city of Merced, one of the most offensive of California's fruit-growing latifundia, the I.C.C., and the executives of the Yosemite Valley itself conspired to hustle through the wrecking of a costly and highly useful agency of transportation was unprecedented even in the more infamous records of the I.C.C. It can only he hoped that the bus company which succeeds the Y.V. may be of a level of squalor, indignity and insufficiency suited to the populace of Merced. xxxxx The Yosemite Valley, an amiable short line serving the scenic wonders of the Yosemite National Park deep in the California countryside, was a seventy eight mile road whose main iron ran from Merced to El Portal and which had been opened to traffic in 1907. Connecting with the Southern Pacific at Merced, it ranged eastward through a rich variety of uplands with fertile meadows, granite gorges and deep waterways to provide for a variety of terrain covered. Its short life was enriched by gentle legend and placid achievement and it was known to thousands of tourists, sight-seers and wedding trippers who peopled its overnight sleeper from San Francisco, its sedate and roomy observation car, its modern steel coaches and diner borrowed in summer months from the Espee. xxxxx Logs and lumber, crushed stone, minerals and petroleum constituted about eighty percent of the Y.V.'s revenue freight. When the writer last surveyed its activities a few weeks before service was suspended it was running ten and twelve cars of freight in its daily eastbound consists, but there were few passengers in its trailing coach. Little doubt, however, existed in the minds of the Park authorities at this time that the close of hostilities in the Pacific, already an assured and closely impending consummation, would see a gratifying revival of passenger traffic to and from El Portal. xxxxx During its thirty-odd years of more than usually gracious existence the Y.V. acquired its full share of anecdote and legend. Celebrities by the score rode on its speedy little varnish hauls. Three Presidents of the United States, the last being F. D. Roosevelt, had their specials routed over its iron. Roosevelt's train was powered by Nos. 26 and 29 to Briceburg where a third engine, No. 25, was added to the impressive drag. In the old days the private cars of millionaires clicked over the switch points at Snelling and Bagby and were spotted on the siding at El Portal. Many years ago, the late, very great Clarence Barron, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, combed his famous spade beard over a dinner table at Bradley's in Palm Beach and remarked to the writer "Young man, when you go to California, don't fail to take in the Yosemite and have the porter wake you at Merced to see the sights!" xxxxx Like any respectable railroad, the Y.V. had its most venerable engineer. In this case it was Charlie Grant, who for twenty years had been a hogger on the Wabash where from 1886 until 1906 he had guided the throttle and horsed the Johnson bar of the road's No. 129, a lean-barreled, straight-stacked American-type eight-wheeler with square valve chests, steam jam brakes and a big headlight. No. 129 was not a great beauty, as locomotives go, but Grant loved it dearly and when, in 1906, the engine was bought from the Wabash by the then emergent Yosemite Valley, he went West to pilot it to its new roundhouse. xxxxx Grant delivered his charge to the Y.V., where it was renumbered the 21, but so reluctant was he to leave the driver's seat that he obtained leave of absence from the home office in Decatur to break his engine in on its new run. He stayed with the Y.V. twenty years and was retired with resounding publicity and weighted down with years and honors in 1926. xxxxx Many years ago, before the motor highway from Briceburg to El Portal was completed, the Y.V. did a considerable business loading automobiles for passengers who wished to continue their trip by car. A few weeks before the highway was opened to traffic, two tourists with their families drove out of the Park, only to find that the road was not surfaced and could not be driven over. What to do! Finally they contacted the superintendent of the Y.V. who located an engine and flat car and charged them $250 for a special to ferry their Locomobile and themselves to Merced. The affluent travellers were Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton! xxxxx When the tracks were originally laid from Merced to El Portal they contained 505 curves. The road's most important business in its final years was that of the Yosemite Portland Cement Company in limestone from Emory to Merced. Another powerful patron was the National Lead Company which shipped ninety-six percent of all the barytes used in California from its holdings at El Portal. Barytes is an essential mineral used in drilling oil wells. Great quantities of logs were hauled out of the hills for the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company which had a mile-and-a-half-long log chute at Incline. The only important change in the Y.V.'s right of way was made when the construction of the Exchequer Dam made necessary the relocation of approximately seventeen miles of rail between Merced Falls and Detwiler. The 1,600-foot Barrett Bridge, 236 feet above low-water mark, is part of this realignment. xxxxx Now the Yosemite Valley's whistle posts will no longer signal a warning blast from No. 22, a graceful Alco-built American type, or No. 23, a similar product of Rogers Locomotive Works with its stack and a spark arrester like a little hat and pumps mounted on the pilot under its hooded head lamp. The pantry lockers of Observation Car No. 330 will not again be stocked with turtle soup and California sand dabs for happy tourists, at least not again on the Y.V. run. xxxxx The Y.V. never had a wreck or serious accident in its entire history, but a few years ago, when the Navy took over the de luxe premises of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, a box car of costly furniture from the hostelry was derailed on the way to Merced and the storage warehouse. So carefully was the furniture boxed and crated that, although it was scattered along the right of way, none of it was damaged. None, that is, until a member of the wrecking crew put his foot through a large plate-glass mirror. xxxxx It was less than seven years from this time that the Yosemite Valley passed into the mists of railroad legend. ===============TWILIGHT ON THE YOSEMITE The Yosemite Valley Railroad, as detailed on adjacent pages, is now with the ages, a fragment of history, but these pictures, taken a few months before its abandonment, will preserve the record of its going. Above is a mixed train eastbound behind No. 25 in the yellow grain fields a short distance from Merced. In the middle is a profile of No. 23, showing the little hat it wore in the guise of a spark arrester, while below its combine trails the morning train through the lush California countryside which made its route to El Portal and the Yosemite National Park a never-to be-forgotten adventure by those who took it. The above accompanied three photographs: (1) number 25 with a mixed train, (2) smoke box of number 23, and (3) a mixed train near the river. ''....THE SPLENDOR AND SPEED OF THY FEET'' At the head end of No. 2, the Yosemite Valley's No. 25 thunders through the tall grasses of inland California toward the sunset even as the shadow of abandonment hangs over the railroad. A few months after this was taken the Yosemite Valley became only a memory in the saga of the forever memorable high iron of the Far West. Accompanied: a photograph of number 25 near Merced passing a cattle crossing.