Alton & Pacific Railroad
California / Tourist / Alton & Pacific Railroad
History
The Alton & Pacific was a little known 2ft gauge tourist operation owned by Frank Bayliss on the Northern California coast, south of Eureka that ran from 1968 until 1989.
Frank Bayliss acquired a 1935 Orenstein & Koppel locomotive that had been brought to the US from Germany after World War II. He Americanized the engine (but the flared stack was actually original) and build a tender for it and fired it on local wood.
The line’s rolling stock consisted of a pair of yellow 4 wheel passenger cars, a coach and a combine that rode behind the engine on the 3/4 mile loop around a former mill property. There were also a couple of flat cars.
After the railroad shut down in the late 1980’s, Frank Bayliss had sold pretty much the entire place to a fellow named Spice who supposedly planned to use the equipment at an island resort he wanted to create somewhere in the South Pacific, but nothing came of it. Spice died in 2004 and Peter Nott was eventually able to acquire the two locomotives in 2007 for the Bitter Creek Western railroad. The locomotives are currently in Arroyo Grande CA (2016) awaiting rehabilitation.
Bayliss moved from Fortuna to Florida in 2007 to live with his daughter, and he passed away in 2008 at the age of 92.
Bibliography
- 1971 Steam Passenger Service Directory, Empire State Railroad Museum, New York.
- Information provided by by Mike Massee to the PacificNG.org facebook group, Dec 3, 2016.
Reference Material Available Online
Equipment Rosters
- No 5, 1935 0-4-0t Orenstein & Koppel c/n 12676.
- The locomotive that had been brought to the US from Germany after World War II. Frank Bayliss Americanized the engine (but the flared stack was actually original) and build a tender for it and fired it on local wood
- 1903 0-6-0t John Fowler, c/n 9460 , for Colonial Sugar, Fiji.
- This locomotive was apparently never operated on the A&P
- Unknown Plymouth gasoline locomotive.
- For most of the railroad’s life there were two passenger cars, a coach and a combine, both painted orange. Late in the railroad’s history a second coach, painted Pullman Green. There were also some flatcars. Cars 10 and 12 are in a private collection in Arcata, the third car was apparently destroyed in the collapse of the barn the equipment was stored in.
- In addition to the 2’ gauge equipment, there was a collection of standard gauge equipment including The Pacific Lumber Company no. 37, a US Plywood dieselized Heisler, two Napa Valley interurbans, a 18" gauge "Snug Harbor" train and a NWP caboose.
Photographs.
- Alton & Pacific Railroad Photographs taken by Robert Hogan.
- Courtesy NWPRR.NET