DVD Pickering’s Sugar Pine Railroad 62 mins • colour and B&W • dubbed sound

£18.25

The standard gauge Sugar Pine Railroad was created to haul logs from the Stanislaus River Canyon to the Pickering lumber mil in California and, at its height, was 70 miles long. This film documents the line’s history from 1909 to 1965, in part with the recollections of two brothers who worked on the line, one as an engineer, one as a brakeman.

To say this line was spectacular in places is an understatement, and demonstrate the lengths and expense logging companies went to to extract timber from the mountains. Six Shay locomotives are seen in action, and there is a huge amount to enjoy here, even if some of the shots are a bit shaky - not surprising as many of these are from the cabs of the Shays as the rock and roll along!