Along the lines of the McCloud photographs posted by Drew and Photobob over the last couple days...here's my contribution.

Eighteen miles east of McCloud lies the small community of Bartle, one of only two established communities the McCloud River Railroad would reach. Brothers Abraham and Jerome Bartle established the community in 1887, built around their ranch headquarters and a hotel they operated that was the overnight stop on the stage and wagon roads connecting the agricultural areas in the Fall River and Big valleys with the new SP line around Mt. Shasta City (then called Sisson). Tracklayers first arrived from the west in 1905, and Bartle became one of the principle stations on the railroad east of McCloud. Facilities built by the railroad through the years included a two story passenger and freight depot, three section houses, a hotel, several tool houses and section sheds, a livestock corral complete with a scale and loading chutes, and a fine hotel.

Perhaps the most well known of the railroad's facilities in this camp was the water tower, as it became a normal stopping point for almost all steam excursions the railroad operated after 1962. This is actually the third tank the railroad built at Bartle- the first lasted from 1909 until 1912; the second, measuring 15'x15'x14' with a 20,000 gallon capacity, lasted from 1912 until 1933; and then the railroad built the final tank, capacity 25,000 gallons, in 1933. The tank cost the railroad $673.66 to build and equip.

The tank fell into disuse after the last of the steam excursions ran in the mid-1980s. Volunteers from the Portola Railroad Museum patched the tank back together and made it operational again for the April 1994 Trains Unlimited Tours special with the Yreka Western #19, after which it again fell into disrepair. The McCloud Railway had plans to make the tank operational again as it launched its steam excursion program in 1997, but the company never did have the available resources to make it happen- the railroad instead would either water the locomotives from a fire car on the siding at Bartle, or tap into a standpipe at the base of the tower, or have a water tender meet the locomotives.

The tank body started to lean as the railroad closed, and despite some stabilization attempts the tank finally succumbed to gravity in July 2011. The base still stands and will be a landmark along the Great Shasta Rail Trail the old right-of-way is becoming, while the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad salvaged the tank hardware from both this tank and the one that used to stand at Hooper (a couple miles west of McCloud) for future use on a pair of water tanks they plan to build.

Three photographs of the same view- #37 with the third to last Sierra job in June 2006, then 2009, and finally in 2011.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

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