Sawlogs on Steel Rails: 45 Years Alberni Railway Logging by George McKnight

The first major sawmill in British Columbia was the Port Alberni Anderson Mill of 1860/1864, which was closed because it ran out of logs. Manager Gilbert Sproat advised the owners that to get logs to the mill they would need to build a railway. The owners refused so the mill was closed. It was to be almost fifty years until the first logging railway was built in 1912. The last train of logs was delivered to MacMillan Bloedel's Franklin River Camp A in 1957. In the intervening period more than thirty locomotives operated on hundred of miles of railway grade in the area. Thousands of men were involved in a large number of logging camps, big and small. This 45 year period of railway logging is the subject of our story.