Hobi Timber Company 2-8-2 "Mikado" Locomotives in the USA

Class 3 (Locobase 14815)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 80, pp. 163+. See also Trainorders.com forum thread "Railroad Logging the Tillamook Burn in Oregon", begun on 5 May 2016 by GYModeller (signed David), at [],4023734, last accessed 4 February 2018; and Doug Decker, "Tillamook Burn" from the online Oregon Encyclopedia, last accessed 4 February 2018 at 8

[]. Works number was 58678 in September 1925.

Piston valves measured 10" (254 mm) in diameter. The maximum grade against a loaded train was 1 1/2%; empty trains faced a 5% grade. The 3 went on to run on the timber-salvager Consolidated Timber Company which was formed in 1933, by three large timber owners (Blodgett Company, the Crossett Western Company, and Henry F. Chaney)

Decker's account says that the first fire was the biggest. Dry conditions (104 degrees F, 20% humidity) on 14 August 1933 transformed sparks struck when a big Douglas fir log was dragged across a downed tree into a rapidly spreading blaze. Although 40,000 acres in ten days may have seemed disastrous, says Decker, that total "was dwarfed by what happened the evening of August 24th. Pushed by strong east winds, the fire exploded to 240,000 acres in twenty hours."

That fire finally was quelled in September 1933 and the CTC went to working clearing the trees. Three more (1939, 1945, and 1951) would break out and consume hundreds of thousands of acres, most of previously burned forest. The last prompted a push toward public ownership and the area would be designated Tillamook State Forest.