Haslam Lake – Duck Lake Railroads

: Railroad Spike and Modified bolt on the Haslam Lake Spur Line

: Broken piece of Railroad track found on the Haslam Lake Spur

: Unknown Item found on the Haslam Lake Spur Line

: Unknown Item Found on Haslam Lake Spur Line discovered leaning on collapsed stump

: Old Cable we located confirming we were still on a rail or donkey track

: This is a Rail Connector, and we located this 2 km from the spur begining

: Although it rained hard and the picture is blurry you can still see the old wooden rail ties that marked the way of the rail line

For most of my life in Powell River I have alway heard of the “Lost Trains” and I am sure I mention this many times in VanishingHistory. I have many locations of “Lost Trains”, some stories are more credible than others but each carries its own valuable information. The Haslam Lake to Duck Lake area is absolutely encased with old rail lines, donkey skid roads, logging truck roads and the main problem is trying to determine which is which and when we combine areas that stories have been told about “Lost Trains” this area is one of the most peculiar as this is also a very well travelled area. This being said its always interesting to go out and locate lost items as well as try to map the area and see if some old tracks still exist. On this particular trip we followed an old line that headed off the path to Mud Lake, a spur line not on any of my maps exactly, although Golden Stanley did a hand-drawn-by-memory map, his is not entirely accurate nor is it complete.
Part of what Vanishing History hopes to accomplish is to map out some of these old lines and to confirm it was indeed an old rail line, and on these two particular lines we did confirm that they were indeed old rail lines as we located spikes, railjoiners and also in one location you could actually still see the Rail Ties in the ground. We also found an oddity in which we beleive was used on a locomotor, it is fashioned out of a steel pipe, is about 5 ft in length and is pointed on one end and like a shovel on the other end. If you know what it truly was used for let me know.