View source for Cowell Portland Cement Company

[[Narrow Gauge Railroads of California|California]] / [[Narrow Gauge Railroads of California#Industrial|Industrial]] / [[Cowell Portland Cement Company]]

===History===

<span>__NOTOC__</span>
<span class="paracap">T</span>'''he''' Cowell Portland Cement Company was established in 1906 as a subsidiary of the Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Company. The Cowell plant was located in Cowell a company town established along with the plant. Today Cowell is part of Concord, California near the intersection of the Ygnacio Valley Road and Cowell Road.  The limestone quarries were 250 feet above the plant on the top of Lime Ridge. A 42 inch gauge railroad was constructed to move the limestone from the quarries to a chute down to the rock crushers. From the rock crushers to the mill a standard gauge locomotive moved the crushed rock to the mill and did general shifting around the plant. The standard gauge tracks were extended to Port Chicago under the company name of the Bay Point & Clayton Railroad. Both railroads were owned by the Cowell Portland Cement Company. A standard gauge locomotive letered for the BP&C moved product to the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads at Port Chicago.

The top of Lime Ridge was dotted with small deposits of limestone appropriate for portland cement manufacture. The company would exhaust one quarry and open another. They were at different elevations and locations requiring the railroad grade to be relocated periodically depending on which quarry was active. Sometimes older higher roadbeds were severed by a lower quarry's expansion. 

A through description of the CPCC and BP&C railroads by the Cowell Historical Society can be found [https://cowellian.wordpress.com/concord/trains/cowell-portland-cement-company-railroad/ here].



==Reference Material Available Online==

===Equipment Rosters===
[[Cowell Portland Cement Company Locomotive Roster]]



[[Narrow Gauge Railroads of California|California]] / [[Narrow Gauge Railroads of California#Industrial|Industrial]] / [[Cowell Portland Cement Company]]

[[Category:Baldwin Locomotives]] [[Category:42in Gauge Railroads]]