Page 107 - John Anderson

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some of the railroads were well built and many of today’s hiking trails
use the old roadbeds. Locomotives on the logging pikes were often
geared locomotives, the Shays and the Climaxes, engines capable of
surmounting extreme grades of as much as 9 percent and operating
on tight curves. Among the conventional rod locomotives used by the
New Hampshire loggers, the Baldwin saddle tanks and the Portland-
built engines were common. Logs were usually carried on two-truck
disconnects or on a flat car.
By 1895, about nineteen logging railroads operated in the White
Mountains and in the remote areas further north. The first one began
in 1870, and many had faded away before the end of World War I.
Only three, the Sawyer River, the East Branch and Lincoln, and the
Beebe River railroads were in operation after 1920. Although there
were nineteen railroads, not all were in operation at the same time.
The peak year was 1895, when ten were in operation in different
parts of the White Mountains. The history of White Mountain logging
railroads is part of the lore of that fascinating era of timber kings,
hardy loggers and daunting logging competition.

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