Photo Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
2022.077.012 |
Object Name |
Print, Photographic |
Description |
Hillcrest Lumber Co. No. 9 on outdoor display at the BC Forest Discovery Centre. No. 9 is a 45-50 ton Class "B" Climax locomotive with a construction number of 1359. |
Image File Name |
unk - Hillcrest No. 9 - Duncan - 2022077012 - jpg72 - 001 |
Date (y/m/d) |
/ / |
Place |
Duncan |
Provenance |
Hillcrest Lumber Co. No. 9 was built in 1915 by the Climax Manufacturing Company. It was originally ourhcased by M.D. Olds Lumber Company of Birch Michigan as No. 1, but the locomotive was too light for the company's requirements. It was then sold to the McNair Lumber Co. for use at their Queen Charlotte’s operation, and shipped to Vancouver by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Canadian Robert Dollar Lumber Company (renamed the Smith Dollar Lumber Company) purchased No. 1 for their Deep Bay and Union Bay operations on Vancouver Island. It was then sold to Abernethy & Lougheed Logging Co. (renumbered No. 44) for their extensive operations in the Fraser Valley (Mission, Ruskin). No. 44 was sold to the Hillcrest Lumber Co. in 1936 (renumbered No. 2) for its operation at Wheatley, 4 miles west of Duncan, where she switched the yard and worked the logging grades of Mount Prevost and Shatlam. By 1942 the timber supply was exhausted, and the operation was moved to Mesachie Lake. Using E&N trackage to Lake Cowichan, and the final 3 miles to Mesachie Lake over the Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing Company’s Robertson River Railway. To avoid confusion with other logging engines using VL&M trackage, No.2 was renumbered No.9. When railway logging at Mesachie Lake ended in 1949, No.9 became a backup to No.10, a newer 70-ton Climax that switched the mill and interchanged freight cars with the E&N terminus at Lake Cowichan, until the mill closed in 1968. Hillcrest Lumber’s Stone Family donated No.9 to the (then) Cowichan Valley Forest Museum in 1968, where it was on outdoor display until 1989. |
Search Terms |
Duncan Climax Hillcrest Lumber Company No. 9 Climax Collection BCFDC |
Collection |
BCFDC Institutional Memory |
Subjects |
Locomotives Documentary, Cowichan Valley |