Restored Engine Number 9 Returns to Mill Valley

Engine Number 9, sole surviving locomotive of the Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railway, will be featured in Mill Valley’s Memorial Day parade on Monday, May 26, 2025.

One hundred one years after Engine Number 9 left Mill Valley, it will make its return to the town’s downtown depot from which, in the 1920s, it pushed train cars up to the Tamalpais Tavern on Tamalpais’s East Peak, a scenic 8.1 miles with 281 turns, billed the “Crookedest Railroad in the World.”

The 36-ton, steam-powered, geared, all-wheel-drive Number 9 was built in 1921 by Heisler Locomotive Works in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was the last engine purchased by the mountain railway. When a kitchen fire destroyed the Tamalpais Tavern, the railway sold this newest engine to raise funds to replace the inn.

After its time on Mt Tam, Number 9 served various logging operations in far northern California before being put on display by The Pacific Lumber Company in Scotia, California, in 1955.

In 2018 a Marin group, including the Mill Valley Historical Society, Friends of Mt. Tam, and many individuals, were high bidders at a sealed-bid auction for the locomotive. Since then, thousands of hours have been spent restoring the engine. Hundreds of pounds of rust were replaced with new steel. Missing parts were located, or remade by expert craftsmen. The entire engine was dismantled down to its wheels, and given a marine-grade finish before and after reassembly.

From 1896 to 1929 the scenic railway carried over a million people up Tamalpais, and, from 1907, to Muir Woods. The appreciation of the mountain and redwoods garnered from these visits raised awareness and helped save the land for future generations.

In the early 1900s, when plans for a reservoir threatened Redwood Canyon, a forest of thousand-year-old redwoods, pressure mounted to save it from being logged. In 1908 the canyon became the first U.S. National Monument, and would be named for naturalist John Muir. Muir Woods, lands saved by Marin Municipal Water District, and Mt. Tamalpais State Park all are legacies of the visionary railroad of Sidney B. Cushing and U. S. Congressman William Kent. The two were instrumental in creating the celebrated open space of today’s Marin County.

Number 9 will be on display at Mill Valley Depot from Friday through Monday, when it will be paraded through town on a low-deck semi-trailer.

The non-profit Friends of No. 9, which led the restoration, hopes to find a secure home for the locomotive on or near Mt. Tamalpais, where she once operated. After the Memorial Day parade, the engine will be featured at the California State Railroad Museum from August 2025 to February 2026