Shasta Cascade Rail Preservation Society

Sacramento, Valley and Eastern No.2, 2-6-2T, has been purchased by Hyman-Michaels and is now in operation on a contract job in Nevada. Before being shipped to Nevada, the engine was shopped in the bay area.

The following letter was received from Kyle K. Wyatt, Curator of History, Nevada State Railroad Museum, Dec. 2, 1998.

The complete history of Sacramento Valley & Eastern 2-6-2T locomotive No. 2 is not known, but the following is a general outline of its heritage.

The locomotive was ordered from the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in 1907 by the SV&E. It was of a typical small industrial design of the time, although very few of this type survive today. Baldwin was the largest builder of locomotives at the time. Built to standard drawings as Baldwin class 10-28 1/4 D - 22 with 17 x 24 inch cylinders and 44 inch drivers, the engine was completed in January of 1908, steam tested on January 28, and given the construction number of 32651. This information comes from the Baldwin Register of Engines, preserved at the Smithsonian Institution.

Its service on the Sacramento Valley & Eastern was relatively uneventful, shuffling between the Southern Pacific connection at Pitt and the mill. The Depression closed down the operation, and it was subsequently scrapped preparing for the reservoir of Shasta Dam. The engine was sold to Hyman Michaels Co., a used equipment dealer and scrapper in South San Francisco, in 1942. They, in turn, appear to have leased it (or possibly sold it) to General Engineering Co. for use in a construction project in Nevada (location unknown). By 1944 the engine had returned to California, where it was photographed in the GEX (General Engineering?) yard in San Leandro.

Some time around 1946 SV&E no. 2 was sold to the M. Davidson Co. scrap yard in Stockton, where it sat in retirement for many years with two other old locomotives. These were the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber 3-truck Shay locomotive no. 4 (now owned by the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Boulder City) and State Belt Railroad 0-6-0 no. 4, later Modesto & Empire Traction no. 5 (now owned by the Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco, home of the State Belt RR).

On April 30, 1969 all three locomotives were donated to the Promontory Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Promontory Chapter, in turn, transferred the engines to the Wasatch Railroad Museum & Foundation, which was associated with a developing tourist railroad in Heber, Utah. After many ups and downs, most of the tourist railroad equipment, including SV&E No. 2, was sold to the Nevada State Railroad Museum in 1993 and moved to Boulder City for a planned museum development. SV&E No. 2 was deemed surplus to Nevada's needs, and has been offered to the Shasta-Cascade Rail Preservation Society, which intends to display the engine in Redding, California, not far from the old Sacramento Valley & Eastern Railroad site.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely yours,

Kyle K. Wyatt, Curator of History

Hart's Note: Jeff Terry of Railfan & Railroad Magazine says it was donated to Wasatch RR Museum, not transferred.