Railway branches were built to reach trees and then dismantled after those logs had been moved to Big River. Total length of track was never more than . Teams of working animals pulled the logs on flatcars until 1901. The railroad was rebuilt after extensive flood damage in 1904. Union Lumber Company purchased the Mendocino Lumber Company sawmill, railroad, and timberlands in 1906; and again rebuilt the railroad after flood damage in 1907. The buildings of Boyle's logging camp were moved on railway cars when the camp was moved upstream from the Big River confluence with Laguna Creek to the Little North Fork Big River in 1912. The Laguna Creek branch line trestle across Big River was replaced by a Howe truss bridge in the winter of 1919-1920. The sawmill operated until 1931 when Union Lumber Company's Fort Bragg sawmill was able to meet lumber demands decreased by the Great Depression. The railroad was dismantled during 1936 and 1937 when Japanese preparations for World War II raised the value of scrap iron. The sawmill was briefly reopened in 1938 to mill Douglas fir logs salvaged when a log raft from Oregon broke up off the coast of Mendocino. Locomotive number 1 arrived in July 1901 to improve overland transport of logs from the remaining forests to the pool five miles upstream of the sawmill. It was Baldwin Locomotive Works 0-4-2 tank locomotive #5353 built in 1880 to pull unpowered street cars around Golden Gate Park. This steam dummy weighed 20 tons with a full-length cab covering the boiler to resemble the street cars it pulled. After replacing the teams on 18 August 1900, the cab length was gradually reduced repairing damage from various woods mishaps over the years until it resembled conventional locomotives. As more capable locomotives arrived to share the load, the first locomotive came to be known as the "Dinky". "Dinky" disappeared when the fourth locomotive arrived about 1923, but its disposal is undocumented. In the spring of 1902 the company received a new Climax locomotive numbered 2 for logging branches with grades as steep as 12 percent. "Excelsior" brought logs from the steep branches to the comparatively level main line downstream of Boyle's logging camp, where the "Dinky" would move them to the log dump five miles upstream of the sawmill. The locomotives were periodically loaded onto a barge at the log dump for transfer downstream to the sawmill for overhaul. On one of these trips "Excelsior" slipped off the barge into the Big River estuary in March 1921.