I found this forum while doing a search earlier this evening that led me to the "Modern Logging Layout" thread from late 2015/early 2016.  Rather than add to that thread, I thought I'd start a new one.

One of the debates on the referenced thread was what constituted a "modern" logging railroad operation.  My general thoughts would be those that dieselized their operations, though that rule does cut off a few that lasted well into the diesel era but remained steam powered until the end.  

There are a couple factors I felt were missing from the earlier thread.  Railroading always has been a very expensive business, and even the smallest logging railroad operations required substantial capital investment.  In a whole lot of ways, it was actually the logging railroad that allowed the sawmill industry to progress beyond the small temporary mill and develop into the major industry it became- the advent of the logging railroad is really what made large sawmills located in one place over extended periods of time feasible, as the railroad provided the means to transport logs ever increasing distances to the sawmill.  The smaller operations might only have a couple miles of track and one or two locomotives- for example, the Santa Cruz Lumber Company, which used a single Shay and a half dozen or so flatcars over something like eight or nine miles of logging railroad that ran up the bottom of a drainage.  Redwood logs would be cut from the hillsides and skidded down into the drainage adjacent to the railroad, then loaded on the flatcars for the short trip to the mill.  Most operations, and especially the larger ones, would tend to build mainlines out into the woods to the harvest area, with a dense network of temporary log spurs built through the cutting areas.  Most of the larger operations out there built hundreds if not thousands of miles of railroad in support of their logging operations, but only a very small portion of the total system would have been in place and in use at any one time.  These logging railroads typically quickly broke down into two systems, one that worked on the temporary spurs in the woods, bringing the logs from the active harvesting areas down to central yards/gathering points, and then the mainline haul that took the logs from there down to the sawmill (or in some cases a dump into an ocean bay, if the logs were to be rafted to the sawmill).  Sometimes this mainline haul would be part of a common carrier shortline, sometimes it was done by the logging railroad.   

The real heyday of the logging railroads especially in the west lasted from around 1900 to the end of World War 2.  In my view, there were really two main reasons why logging railroads died.  The first and most obvious reasons were trucks, which required much less capital investment and had much greater flexibility than railroads.  Trucks really started making inroads in the woods in the 1920s, and by the 1930s they were killing off logging railroads in rapid fire fashion.  A second but much less obvious factor dealt with changes in logging practices, as companies shifted away from the vast landscape-level clearcutting towards selective thinning or smaller patchwork clearcuts, which served to drastically decrease the volume of logs originating from a single geographic area.  Most logging and lumber companies found it economical to replace their entire logging railroad operation with trucks, mostly running on roads built on top of the old railroad grades.  Those logging railroads that survived into the 1950s or later were generally only those that ran from one or more truck to railcar reloads down to the sawmill or log dump, and mostly then only if the volume of logs shipped remained sufficient to maintain the economics of shipping by rail.  Most of the places where logging railroads existed past the middle 1950s fit this mold, though there were a small handful of spur line operations that persisted into the early 1960s before quitting.  

One of the posters in the earlier thread dug up a couple articles from a seven part series CTC Board ran on surviving loggers back in the late 1980s/early 1990s- I don't remember the exact issues now, but they had one issue each on Camas Prairie, Chehalis Western, Weyerhaeuser Springfield, St. Maries River, Simpson, Canadian Forest Products, and Oregon California & Eastern/Weyerhaeuser Woods Railroad.  I'll look up the specific issues maybe tomorrow.  

One of the issues that does confuse some of the issue of log haulers is the common carrier shortline railroad.  Many lumber companies especially around the west operated both logging railroads bringing logs from the woods to the mill and common carrier shortlines hauling the finished lumber out to the nearest mainline connection.  However, there were many examples of common carriers that made part to all of their living hauling raw logs, and they tend to conflate the issue.  Examples of this would include operations like the Apache Railroad in Arizona, which both hauled logs from the woods to the mill for its parent Southwest Forest Industries in addition to lumber to the Santa Fe connection.  McCloud River Railroad handled a lot of intraline log traffic interchanged from the McCloud River Lumber Company logging railroads that connected to many parts of its mainline.  Oregon & Northwestern existed almost entirely to haul logs for its parent, Edward Hines Lumber Company, the fifty miles from Seneca, Oregon, south to the mill in Hines.  The Longview, Portland & Northern had a similar arrangement with its corporate parent Long-Bell north of Longview.  The Oregon California & Eastern depended almost entirely on logs shipped by Weyerhaeuser for its existence.  The California Western Railroad continued hauling logs loaded at various points on its mainline well into the late 1970s, if not the very early 1980s.  Then there were several private logging railroads that had trackage rights over common carriers- both Hammond Lumber and Pacific Lumber Companies had trackage rights over parts of the Northwestern Pacific, and Pickering operated over a couple miles of the Sierra Railroad mainline.  Finally, the Chehalis Western and St. Maries River were resurrected or created by their parents, Weyerhaeuser (CW) and Potlatch (STMA) to take over parts of the abandoned Milwaukee Road; the CW also operated for a while some old Weyerhaeuser private road, while Potlatch had some private logging railroad on the old Milwaukee above and beyond the STMA.  

The only remaining true logging railroad in North America today is the old Canadian Forest Products on Vancouver Island.  All the others have vanished.  However, there are still a number of places where logs still move by rail- one of the best examples is in western Oregon, where shortline Albany & Eastern and regional Portland & Western combine to ship a lot of raw log traffic, mostly loaded at various points on the AERC and shipped to the St. Helena area.  Someone of the earlier thread mentioned the log trains back in 2003, several thousand carloads of burned logs coming out of Arizona that went to sawmills primarily in California and Oregon (Sierra Pacific Industry mills in Susanville, Standard, and Chinese Camp, plus some other logs sent to the small D.R. Johnson mill in Prairie City, Oregon). 

All this being said, my list of "true" western logging railroads that survived into the "modern" era (at least as I define it) is as follows.  This list includes only those operations that purchased diesel locomotives, there were others that kept steam power until the end that lasted into at least the middle 1950s to early 1960s that are not listed (Klickitat Log & Lumber, Georgia Pacific out of Toledo, Oregon, others).  I have placed at least the rough time line each stopped hauling logs, I do have exact years for most to all of these.  Additions, corrections, and the like are always welcome.

California

Arcata & Mad River (Northern Redwood Lumber/Simpson) stopped hauling logs circa 1958.

Hammond Lumber Company (Georgia Pacific), Samoa- shut down 1971.

Pacific Lumber, Scotia, shut down 1977.  

Pickering Lumber, Standard, shut down mid 1960s.

McCloud River Lumber/Railroad- stopped hauling logs early 1964.

Oregon

Brooks-Scanlon, Bend- shut down 1956

Oregon & Northwestern/Edward Hines Lumber, Hines and Seneca- Logging railroad shut down 1968, O&NW continued hauling logs until around 1978.

Coos Bay Lumber (Georgia Pacific), Powers- shut down circa 1973

Oregon Pacific & Eastern, Cottage Grove- stopped hauling logs early to middle 1970s.

Weyerhaeuser Sutherlin- This was a late logging railroad, built around 1948ish, then shut down circa 1961.  Effectively replaced by the Springfield operation.

Weyerhaeuser Springfield- Shut down late 1980s.

Weyerhaeuser Woods/Oregon California & Eastern, Klamath Falls- Shut down 1990. 

Medford Corporation, Medford- shut down circa 1961.

Washington

Longview Portland & Northern/Long Bell, Longview- shut down 1953.

Rayonier, Grays Harbor- Shut down early 1980s.

Rayonier, Clallam- Shut down circa 1963

Simpson, Shelton- Logging railroad mostly ended circa 2003, last remnant closed only a year or two ago.

Weyerhaeuser, Tacoma area- long complicated history, last operations ceased circa 1992.

Weyerhaeuser Longview- Eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 obliterated most of the logging railroad.  Other operations continued until a couple years ago.  

Schafer Brothers, Shelton area- Sold out to Simpson late 1950s/early 1960s.

US Plywood, Kosmos- Shut down late 1950s/early 1960s

Puget Sound & Baker River- Shut down late 1950s/early 1960s

Idaho

Potlatch, Headquarters- Shut down late 1960s.

St. Maries River Railroad, St. Maries- stopped hauling logs early 2000s.

Arizona

Southwest Forest Industries, McNary/Apache Railroad (stopped hauling logs late 1960s/early 1970s?) and Flagstaff (shut down late 1960s).

British Columbia

Comox, shut down by early 1980s.

Canadian Forest Products, remains operating today.

I will shortly put up a second thread on notes on diesel loggers.

Thanks for looking, and I hope this gets the conversation restarted.

Jeff Moore

Elko, NV