West Side Lumber Company 205
This 24-foot, 15-ton, 36-inch gauge car was constructed in the West Side Lumber Company shop in Tuolumne, California circa 192*X* as log flatcar #205, part of the extensive fleet that supported WSLCo's Sierra Nevada logging operations. The car was substantially rebuilt on December 21, 1937 with a completely new body and equipped with WSLCo's standard four-spring trucks, symbolic of the company's systematic approach to maintaining and extending the service life of its rolling stock during the Depression era.
After 1940, the car was converted from log service to flatcar #205 for company service use, supporting maintenance-of-way operations, material transport, and other non-logging functions. This conversion reflected the evolution of WSLCo operations and the changing needs of the railroad as logging patterns shifted.
Following West Side Lumber Company's cessation of railroad logging operations on October 28, 1960, the car was sold to a private railroad operator in McKinleyville, California in 1962 or later [exact date uncertain]. It was donated to SPCRR in 2*0*X* and moved to temporary storage offsite in November 2006. The car was subsequently moved to Ardenwood in 2*0*X*. It has been largely disassembled and used as parts for other cars, thanks to the Carter clone design Westside utilized for their self-built flatcars.
* Unknown date information, closest confident date range used.
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You can see a preview of the restoration report at the link below:
Citation
"West Side Lumber Company 205", Flat Cars, The Railroad Museum at Ardenwood, accessed October 1, 2026, http://museum.spcrr.org/exhibits/show/flat_cars/west-side-lumber-company-205.