Eagle River and Northern Railway (the Stillwater Railroad)

In 1908, Brooks and Scanlon bought a company in Stillwater that included a railway, owned by John O’Brien, who remained a partner until his death in 1917. The new company, Brooks, Scanlon & O’Brien was set up to log the region south of Powell River, where O’Brien had been logging since 1900.

They named it ‘Stillwater’ after a mill site they owned in Minneapolis. The base camp they constructed in Stillwater Bay was the finest on the coast and included a combination hotel, general store, dance hall, restaurant, pool hall and post office.

As you traveled up the railroad, you would cross a 100-foot trestle spanning the Lois River, referred to as the Copenhagen Canyon. Its name originated from the loggers’ habit of tossing empty Copenhagen-brand snuff tins out the windows when the train passed over the trestle.

 
Spring Lake (Camp 4)

Note the car on the track. B.S.&O used a 1923 Packard Runabout with flanged wheels as a "speeder", or jitney.

The Stillwater Eagle and Northern rail line proceeded north from Stillwater along Eagle River (Lois River), past Copenhagen Canyon and the first Gordon Pasha Lake, (Lois Lake) then up the Horseshoe Valley past Toni Lake and Nanton Lake to Camp 4, the Spring Lake camp.  
This 1923 map shows the rail line only going as far as Nanton Lake. Spring lake is west of the south tip of Lewis Lake.

On July 12, 1926, a disastrous fire started by a steam donkey led to the demise of Brooks, Scanlon and O'Brien at Stillwater. They sold their interests to the Powell River Company in 1929.

Locomotives on the line:

• Shay shop number 1733

The old railway bed above the new Lois Lake dam that was flooded in 1930 when the original dam was built.

From http://vanishinghistory.ca

Photo by Rudi van Zwaaij Dec 14, 2011, showing part of the old railbed of the Eagle River & Northern Railway. It shows a small through-cut located at 4.5 Km on Spring Lake Road on a spur off to the left. WFP has re-activated this railbed as a road for logging