San Francisco and the Bay Area News & History

This was the Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway, and the pride of the line was engine No. 9, which has been restored to its former glory.

No. 9 is ticketed for display at Mill Valley’s landmark former rail station this weekend and will be the centerpiece of the town’s Memorial Day parade Monday. No. 9 will ride on a flatbed truck just behind Mill Valley’s shiniest red fire truck from the Old Mill School through downtown and along Miller Avenue to Tamalpais High School. The parade starts at 11 a.m.

No. 9 is the last surviving artifact of the mountain railroad which ran from Mill Valley to a terminal just below the summit of Mount Tamalpais starting in 1896. Later there was a branch line to Muir Woods.

The railroad was a tourist line, pure and simple, and advertised its winding roadbed (with 281 curves in just over 8 miles) as “the crookedest railroad in the world” and the ride “the greatest sight-seeing trip on earth.”

Engine No. 9, purchased new from the Heisler Locomotive works in 1921, was the pride of the line, the most powerful engine — a “thoroughly modern” machine with all-wheel drive. 

However, it was expensive to operate, and when the railroad ran into financial difficulties in 1924, No. 9 was sold at a bargain rate to a Humboldt County lumber company for use on logging trains. But it was charmed; it survived for a century. The railroad did not. Done in by changing times, it was abandoned in 1930.

But the crooked railroad lived in legend. Rail historians and a few old-timers kept the memory alive for another generation. One of the railroad’s admirers was Fred Runner, who became aware of the railroad when he stopped by the West Point Inn, built by the railroad in 1904 and still in operation.

“I thought it was a good story that needed to be told,” he said. Besides the West Point Inn, one other artifact had survived: Engine No. 9, then owned by the Pacific Lumber Co. in the mill town of Scotia in Humboldt County.

The old engine was sitting in a park for more than 60 years. In the meantime, the lumber industry faded, the mill closed and the old locomotive gathered rust and attracted vandals.

Runner and some of his associates formed a group called Friends of No. 9, bought the engine at auction for just over $50,000, spent more than $30,000 moving it to the North Bay and close to $500,000 restoring it. “We took out tons of rust and rebuilt it,” Runner said.    

Now No. 9 is in museum quality condition, down to the controls in the cab, the gauges, even the engineer’s brake handle. The craftsmanship in restoring the engine was meticulous. “It’s breathtaking, honestly,” Runner said. It’s not possible to operate No. 9 under steam. It’s just too old.

After the Memorial Day parade, No. 9 will go to a temporary home at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento as a featured display. There’s talk about a permanent display around Mount Tamalpais. But that’s a discussion for another time.