Running Mates. A short Eccles Lumber Freight holds Hawley Spur as a Sumpter Valley Mixed Train charges past en route to McEwen and Baker City to the east.
Although the two locomotives pictured here are about as different as narrow gauge engines get, they are in fact running mates on the Sumpter Valley, not just in the modern era, but also back on the original line. The Sumpter Valley was nicknamed the "Stump Dodger" for good reason. Logging operations, which branched out into the hills all along this line, were a major industry in the region. These operations typically utilized geared locomotives, which could run on really ratty track and climb grades that no rod engine could handle. The Heisler engine pictured here was not only the most mechanically efficient of the 3 major geared engine designs, but it was also the fastest, enabling it to not only deal with the temporary track that was so common in the logging industry, but it could also co-exist to some degree on the main line with with the faster rod engines that were used by the Sumpter Valley for both freight and passenger operations.
