The continued effort to restore the historic No. 9 locomotive, most recently by reconnecting the train engine with an 8-ton boiler, according to the Marin IJ, had another jolt of good news recently, as longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte reported on the ongoing effort to revive and restore the magnificent train.
“Sometimes, it takes a while for a great notion to come to life,” Nolte writes. “For years, admirers of the late, great Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway dreamed of a way to acquire and restore old No. 9, the railroad’s last remaining steam locomotive, which had been rusting away in the small lumber mill town of Scotia in Humboldt County.
Six years ago, a group called Friends of No. 9 bought the engine at auction from the Scotia Community Services District for $56,240. They spent $32,000 moving it by flatbed truck to a ranch in Sonoma County where restoration could begin. The friends hoped to bring No. 9 to museum standards and then bring it back to Tamalpais country. Both ideas were harder than they seemed. As it turned out, the locomotive was so rusted and worn that it had to be taken apart and put back together, carefully and slowly.
The restoration project is going well. On a recent morning, a crane mounted on a truck lifted the locomotive’s 1,000 pound cab back on the engine — and for the first time in years, No. 9 looked almost brand new, polished and gleaming in new paint. “It was like putting the cherry on top of the cake,” said Fred Runner, the president of Friends of No. 9.
Runner, an independent film sound technician, is a long admirer of the mountain railroad and has written a book about its life and times. No. 9, he says, “is the last piece of a great story.’’
The railroad itself was the story. It began in 1896 when Marin County business people came up with the idea of building a railroad from downtown Mill Valley to the top of Mount Tamalpais, the beautiful peak 2,400 feet above the town. It was the dawn of the tourist industry in California, and they thought visitors would pay a pretty penny to see the famous view from the top of Tamalpais.
The line was just over 8 miles long and had 281 curves. The company’s marketing department called it “The crookedest railroad in the world,” a name that stuck.
The railroad was a hit almost immediately thanks to nonstop advertising. It was described as “the most scenic railroad in the world,” and celebrities lined up to praise the trip. When Muir Woods became a national monument, the railroad built a branch line to serve it. John Muir himself rode the rails to see the forest that bore his name.”