Historic Hood River

Notes

This image from the George Thomson family album may show an important piece of railroad history if I am correct identifying this as the Mt. Hood Railroad locomotive #1 (3rd) circa 1915.  This site is invaluable tracing Mt. Hood Railroad history.  According to footnote #3,

MH no. 1 (3rd) was built in 1882 as Oregon Railway & Navigation no. 58; renumbered to OR&N 443 (2nd) in 1890; renumbered to OR&N 56 in 1894; renumbered to OR&N 56 in 1896; vacated in 1901; sold to Tacoma Eastern Railway no. 2; sold to Mount Hood Railroad no. 1 (3rd) in 1919; possibly scrapped after the arrival of MH no. 1 (4th) in 1922.

That would mean this steam locomotive was built way back in 1882, and was one of the first to serve Hood River on the main line of the Oregon Rail & Navigation Company tracks.  Perhaps some of our rail experts can verify the particulars:  can you tell if this is a “4-4-0 Manchester” locomotive?  The context in the album matches the particulars.  It is present alongside other images of the Mt. Hood Railroad and images with verifiable dates to the mid 1910s.  A piece which doesn’t make sense is why it would still bear the engine number “58” which it gave up decades before.

I believe this is one of the Franz brothers, presuming my identification in this post is correct.

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