West Fork Logging Company No. 91 is a three-truck Heisler locomotive that was built in 1930 by the Heisler Locomotive Works in Erie, PA.
The Whitney Engineering Company in Tacoma, WA, the West Coast dealer for Heisler engines, ordered this three truck locomotive in 1930 as stock.
Two years later, Whitney sold the engine to the Kinzua Pine Mills in Kinzua, OR, where it was engine numbered #102.
When Kinzua began dieselisation in the 1950s, while its Shay engines were scrapped, #102 was retained as back up to the diesels.
In 1978, it was sold to Tom Murray Jr., who donated the locomotive to the MRSR where it was engine renumbered #91 in honour of an earlier three truck Heisler that worked out of Mineral, WA, for the West Fork Logging Company, an operation founded by the father of Tom Murray, it was the second engine restored to operation at Mineral, WA.
As of today the engine is stored inoperable at the MRSR, awaiting boiler work.
Trivia[]
- In 1965, it was sold to Clyde Schurman, a machinist who displayed the engine at his machine shop in Woodland, WA.
- Engine No. 91 is a West Coast Special.
- By the early 1960s, however, the Heisler had outlived its purpose and was sold and shipped to the Vernonia South Park & Sunset tourist railroad in Vernonia, OR.
- The locomotive never steamed at Vernonia.
- Number 91 appeared in several documentaries: Steam Expo, Steam engineer, Geared Doubleheader, Geared triple-header, Mount Rainier Scenic’s Geared Locomotives, Washington the beautiful, & Soaring Over America.
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