UtahRails.net

UtahRails.net

UtahRails, This and That

Thoughts and commentary about [whatever]

This page was last updated on July 17, 2024.

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Overview

This is a simple effort to capture some of my own writings. I have participated in numerous online discussion groups as far back as November 1998, when I created LocoNotes on what was then OneList.com. I've been through numerous hard drive crashes, and some of what I have written about has survived, but most has not, especially before the mid 2001 time period. As I clean out my old emails, some are worth keeping, and most of those are presented here.

Back in April 2005, I started a personal web log (blog) on Blogspot. It lay dormant for over two years while I was completing other projects. After the last book project, the second edition of Ogden Rails, was completed in 2005, I spent most of my time creating and updating a large number of web pages (Union Pacific steam locomotives and Union Pacific passenger cars), along with keeping the online roster listings of Union Pacific diesel locomotives up to date. Other activities included magazine articles for The Streamliner, published by Union Pacific Historical Society.

In August 2010, I migrated all of the Blogspot content to Wordpress.com, and in late June 2015, I retired the blog and migrated all of that content to either new web pages, or integrated it into existing web pages. This page is a place to put whatever does not fit on other pages.

Many of the items included here come from some of the 15,000 emails I retained from as far back as 1999. I started a complete review of all my emails in October 2014, and finished the effort in May 2016. (Read more about my emails)

Additions have continued starting in May 2024, as still more emails have been reviewed and their contents integrated into UtahRails.net.

What Makes A Good Railroad Book?

(September 4, 1995, borrowing from a May 1992 essay by Harre Demoro)

Most people are stunned to realize that it is just as difficult to write a good book about a railroad as it is to hammer out chapters about the White House during the Coolidge years, or a detective story. Writing books is hard work, and the financial rewards at best modest. My advice to people who want to write railroad books is: Don't. Books are awful work. To do them well requires massive bruising of ego. Books can ruin or challenge marriages and friendships -- especially friendships.

Once a person is willing to accept these conditions, the prospective railroad book author ought not to attempt to write a railroad book. The approach should be to write a book. Period. The fact that the topic may be about a railroad should not make any difference. Approach the subject as a curious person, not as a railfan. The worst research projects are conducted by people who are writing about their favorite railroad, or type of locomotive. Photographic collections usually don't make great books. The ones that are finished are almost always dull, slow journeys through every fact and non-fact, using muddy and mediocre photographs and maps. They tend to be totally about the railroad, without mentioning the geographic region, and the social, political, and economic conditions that may prevail on the railroad's operation.

A book should tell a story. It should have information that almost anyone, railfan or not, would find interesting. I am doing two projects that, for the sake of readers, I probably should avoid: books about my two favorite subjects, Union Pacific diesels and the railroads of Utah. I am stumbling over facts. I am unsure my perspective is sharp. I fear I will bore the reader. The subjects are so close to me that I question my approach. The photographs and maps will be great. I have discovered that about 50 percent of what I was sure was about is 90 percent wrong and a lot of the remaining 50 percent is questionable. So I am researching more intensely that I thought would be necessary. Maybe that will save the books from dullness. I know there will be errors. Every book has them. Even mine.

(View a list of my books and magazine articles.)

The Sound and The Fury

(Posted to the Diesel List on April 19, 1999)

There is no sound system that gets it right, especially the feel. I appreciate the effort that went into them, but they are not for me. I have heard, and felt, the real thing. There is nothing that can duplicate the sound and feel of 12,000 ponies in four UP SD40-2s lugging 8,000 tons up Echo Canyon at 35 mph, and being side by side with them on a parallel road, for over four miles, sometimes right at truck level. The senses are almost in overload with the sound, the sand dust, the vibration; that's why I'm a modeler and a railfan. A real close second is standing at exhaust stack level as five Utah Railway SD45s and F45s pull 10,000 tons of coal past you, with four SD45s and F45s as mid train helpers, as they throttle up and come off the Utah and on to the Rio Grande at Utah Railway Junction in Price River Canyon.

I think I became a railfan in the summer of 1964 as I watched and listened to a D&RGW GP9, in yellow stripes, work the Sugar House Local in Salt Lake City, following the train on my bike as it switched the myriad of industries found along the line. Its sound and feel was later firmly set in place in the cab of a UP GP9 in April 1968, when I was still in high school. There was a last run of the Cache Valley Local, a mixed local on one of UP's branch lines here in northern Utah. I was invited to sit in the fireman's seat of the train's GP9 for a good part of the trip, riding in the cupola of the caboose the rest of the trip, as they traveled at 25 mph over the branch, switching industries both coming and going. The sound and feel is something I will never forget, especially the sound of the diesel engine itself running, it is a sound truly unique to a GP9 (or at least to the 567). The sound of the engine rpm going up to kick a car, then coming back down. I have heard the sound several times since, and enjoyed it every time. A GP38-2 comes close, and is almost as good, but nothing beats a GP9.

And, yes, an idling GP9 makes a great sleeping pill. UP's fireman and brakeman cab seats were large and extremely comfortable, nothing like those stools that are in the units now. Warm cab, dark outside, work caught up, and the boss out of sight. Good. Night.

Misguided Rail Museums

(Posted to Trainorders.com on on August 27, 1999.)

Preserve a UP C630? Why? Because it's an Alco? It sure isn't a significant UP locomotive. As Blair said, there were only 10 C630s on UP, and they became orphans real quick. They were retired and sold six years after they were delivered.

Preserve the SD40X from Cheyenne? They were definitely landmark locomotives, but not on UP. They were bears to maintain (unique electrical), and didn't play well with others. Steve Lee told me they saved the 3042 from the Houston dead line only to keep it from being scrapped, hoping to interest some museum at a later date. It was offered to several, with no response. Finally, they decided to sell it as an asset of the heritage fleet and use the money to keep the other stuff running.

How many realize that the old C&NW 5525 (planned UP 707) was the first GP40 built, as NYE 3036? I asked Steve Lee about preserving it, and he gave essentially the same answer as John Bromley, that UP is no longer in the preservation business. The heritage fleet must pay for itself.

Which brings me to the museums. The local Promontory Chapter of the NHRS had Utah Railway 306 and 401 in its collection. Great idea. But they sold them to keep their passenger car in operation, running with the Thiokol shuttle cars from Brigham City to Cape Canaveral. The money they make from these Thiokol moves doesn't come near covering the costs of keeping that stupid car in Amtrak running order, so they have to do anything they can to keep the money coming in, including getting rid of two locomotives that were very significant in Utah's railroad history. They were also offered a UP caboose back when UP was donating cabooses to anyone that was interested. Not interested. Go figure.

In 1993, Morrison Knudsen took over the maintenance of Utah Railway's locomotives, a fleet of rebuilt SD40s. When MK took over the actual shop space, they wanted the McKeen car body moved. This is the steel body of the largest McKeen car built, the most powerful one built, and the only one with a six-axle power truck. The car body had been sitting adjacent to the Utah's locomotive shop since 1926, and was recognized by Utah Railway as being historically significant. They offered it to the NRHS for preservation. Guess what? I was told that the NRHS chapter responded that they did not have the money to move the car (they were saving it for needed maintenance on the trucks on their passenger car). Utah offered to pay for the move. NRHS chapter said they did not have the money to store the car. End of discussion, thanks but no thanks. The car was sold to an employee, cut in half, and moved to his farm as a storage shed.

Roster From Hell

(August 9, 1999)

Union Pacific after the Harriman era is a fascinating subject. Unfortunately, there isn't near enough information published on the subject. The limited number of books and articles available are more a reflection of a publisher's personal interest in UP, rather than the road's marketability as the subject of a book. For the past ten years, I have been struggling to get the information into print, without it being edited for space or page count. The worst example was the 1992 UP locomotive annual. The roster in that book was severely edited for space because they wanted to include the articles at the front. The folks at Hyrail called it the "roster from hell." If it was such, it was purely because they were trying to make it smaller. I sent them a full UP roster, from 1980 to 1992, including all new units, all renumberings, all retirements, and all known sales. I tried to convince them that while the articles and photos might sell the book, it was the roster that would have readers coming back to the book, and to Hyrail for more UP books. The 1992 book did not sell well, giving them the impression that UP does not sell well. I have just sent an all-time UP diesel roster to Withers Publishing, from 1934 to 1999. Time will tell how many volumes it ends up being.

Roster Information Copyright

(December 10, 1999)

An interested observer wrote: "Information, facts themselves, cannot be copyrighted. If they could, every book whose bibliography lists other books would be in violation copyright law. In the present situation, off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen different references by different authors that contain the information that ATSF 1460 is ex-1160, exx-2450, and exxx-2220. Who owns the copyright on that information? The publishers? The railroad? Actually, no one does. Those are facts, and cannot be copyrighted."

When I started down this road of compiling information for publication in 1992, with the UP 1992 annual, Dale Sanders and I had a serious discussion about copyright. The advise he had received was that information cannot be copyrighted, but the format in which it is presented can be. Hence, Dale stuck with his established format, and the book was copyrighted by Hyrail, forcing them to re-type the entire roster, introducing several typographical mistakes in the process. It's a hard business to be in.

For the 1995 C&NW book, I did the roster and Paul Withers presented it in a particular format, and the copyright is his. I took the format I had initially used for the C&NW book, changed it slightly from lessons-learned for better usability and easier reading, and began compiling all my rosters in that format. When the 1998 UP locomotive directory was published, it presented the roster in my unique format, and Paul put my name on it as copyright owner. The 1999 book was the same, as will be the upcoming 1934-1982 book and 2000 locomotive directory. (In later locomotive directories after my last one in 2000, Paul Withers used a format that he developed and those books are his as copyright holder.)

Robert Del Grosso's books present the BN and BNSF rosters in a unique format, that is recognizable as being done by Mr. Del Grosso. Hopefully, the UP rosters I have done are also recognizable as mine, as any author's writing style is recognizable as coming from that author. I don't own the information about Union Pacific's diesel locomotive fleet, but, hopefully, I present the information in a readable and usable format.

I started this mailing list [LocoNotes] 14 months ago to share information about locomotives. The initial subscribers were all people that I specifically invited, and they are all publishers of locomotive information. I meant this list to serve as forum to develop information that would eventually find itself into published books and articles. ** And to seek out errors that need to be corrected. **

Unfortunately, while the list has definitely served that purpose, it has also served as a source of information for folks who are building their own private databases, which bothers me a bit because a private database is just that, private. But that is the subject of another discussion.

While I would like to publish an all-time UP roster to the web, it would be so big that it would cost me extra cash each month to rent server space, and I would not be able to make any of that money back. It is better to publish to a book, and thereby make it available to many more people. Contrary to what we read and hear in the media, the internet will not be replacing published information, at least in our life times. But it is a great place to gather and share information, and spread the latest rumors. I don't care who uses the information from my rosters, as long as they at least give me credit.

The Last One

(December 26, 1999

The 2000 locomotive directory will be the last one. I'm giving serious consideration to dropping out of the current UP roster information loop. Both Paul Withers and I are kind of suffering from burn-out, and there are a lot of other things we both want to do, like the Merger Era book(s), and I want to get some modeling done. December 31, 1999 seems like an excellent date to end my interest in the current UP locomotive fleet. With Joe Shine dropping the Motive Power Annuals, and Withers backing off on the UP loco directory, that kind of leaves an open market (for a book with a press run of about 1,500 or maybe 2,000 books). The Motive Power Annuals are expensive and time consuming to produce, and the locomotive directories are extremely time consuming. I'm tired of it, and I wanna do something else. The two Classic Era volumes are done (and the follow-on Merger Era book(s) are almost done), and that has really been the focus of my interest for the past ten years. I think it's time for someone else to pick up the torch.

Doing The Minimum

(December 28, 1999)

Most fans do not realize that the large railroads spend only the absolute minimum resources keeping track of their locomotive fleets. To them, it's like a utility company keeping track of their pick-up trucks. When I got into Kennecott Copper's property management records searching for renumber and retirement information for their electric and diesel fleet at the Utah operations, I was very surprised at the minimal methods large corporations use to keep track of millions of dollars worth of property, and my recent association with UP and their various renumber plans, and the minimal methods they use to keep track of their millions and millions of dollars worth of locomotives has been a real eye-opener. I'm losing interest real fast -- what a mess! It is truly like hitting your head against a brick wall.

Roster Notes

(March 19, 2000)

Concerning the use of general notes in a locomotive roster, versus using specific notes for a single locomotive; although a general note may call out a specific unit, for the Union Pacific 2000 locomotive directory, I retained most notes as general notes because they deal with a subject or situation that applies more to a feature for the group than to that specific unit. Just because a note calls out a specific unit, it does not mean that it automatically needs to be a specific note.

The 1999 locomotive directory had many specific notes that had originally been general notes. I had one comment from a reader in July 1999 July that he found all of the specific notes a bit confusing, but I told him that we weren't going to do it that way again. But the final proofs for the 2000 directory showed that the editors had left the specific notes unchanged, which I found to be a bit upsetting.

My own definition of what is a specific note grew out of the earlier use of notes as dispositions. When I began using the heading of "Notes" rather than "Dispositions," I continued to use specific notes only as dispositions. Conceding to an editor's thinking, I made all of the changes for a couple of the groups, but going back and reading them, they just don't seem right. It's simply not the way that I wanted the roster to read.

I realize that the editor was concerned with the readability of the text, but so am I -- I guess the editors were assuming that I hadn't given much thought to the "readability" of the roster, that I was just stuffing numbers into a big list of numbers. If I have learned nothing else from authoring books, I have learned that I must consider the reader in everything that I write. I am also concerned with the amount of keyboarding that has to be done for each change. Every time we touch the keyboard, it is possible to introduce new mistakes.

I will continue to use general notes for first and last units to be repainted into a group, because it deals with the repainting of the whole group, rather than a specific unit. Plus, in almost all cases, I would have to add another column just for notes on references to the first and last numbers repainted. With the many groups of renumbered units that would have been in the 2001 locomotive directory, and with the additional column for unit history, there was not sufficient horizontal room for additional columns.

Life Changes

(November 20, 2000)

I was surprised at the silliness of a recent discussion of builder plate dates on the LocoNotes discussion group. Hopefully, I made it clear in my last posting that I was asking what to do if I didn't have plate dates, taken from actual checks of the builder's plate. Would it be okay to use delivery dates. The whole thing got twisted out of proportion.

This most recent UP 2000 Locomotive Directory will be the last. I may even give up moderating the LocoNotes discussion group. I am finding the whole current UP roster quite boring, mostly because with this renumbering effort and the people I have come to know, I can see just how incompetent the upper layers of UP's locomotive fleet management really is. In my day job I see good logistics management and planning, and plenty of bad planning too. The UP renumbering is a massive project, being very badly executed. BNSF did it so much better. It is simply a matter of good planning, which UP has never had to do.

It is a lot more fun researching history, especially Utah railroads and mining. After reading Ambrose's recent book, I am heading back into that subject, especially how the whole thing affected Utah before 1900. I have enjoyed helping the folks at the UP historical society, but most of those guys have blinders on and only see UP steam, especially operating excursion steam.

I have been building a web site to share what I have, since I am haunted by the image of the only copy of my research being here in my basement. At least on a web site, it is available to anyone with a computer and internet access. I have pretty much given up on trying to make money from this stuff, since the personal cost in time and emotional strain is way too high. And I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable jumping through hoops and meeting deadlines, just so someone else can make a lot more money than me, off of my work. I'd rather share it free of charge.

Book Reviews

(May 10, 2001)

One of the many valuable lessons I have learned by being part of the publishing community is that no one gives a negative review. It's okay to give a positive review, but you will never see a negative review in any publication that has any advertisers to keep happy, or any kind of standing in the publishing field. It's okay to say what's right about a subject, but unless you truly feel that the item is a rip-off (and not merely as good as you think it should be), and that the producer is a con-man simply trying to separate people from their money, I would stay away from a negative review.

If you read an neutral review, it could mean that the reviewer did not care for the product, but had enough courtesy to not say so. Case in point is the recent review of my Diesels of the UP, 1934-1982, Volume 1 in Trains magazine. It is a neutral review in that the reviewer simply told what the book was about, and did not include any positive remarks, such as "This is the best book ever written!" A neutral review could also mean that the reviewer has no background at all in the subject of the book, so really could not do an in-depth review.

I have seen several exchanges recently in online communities about whether or not someone is qualified to publish a review, meaning does the reviewer have a background in the subject being reviewed, giving credibility to his opinion. Simply being a consumer of the product does not make one qualified to publish a review. Such a thing would be akin to me doing a review of a book about the steam locomotives of the Florida East Coast simply because I decided to buy a copy of the book for its pretty pictures. I have no background whatsoever in FEC steam locomotives, so why would anyone care what Don Strack thinks about such a book. If I went ahead and did a review anyway, it would show an embarrassing level of arrogance on my part. But hey, that's just me. Back in my apprenticeship days at Union Pacific, many, many years ago, a very wise old boilermaker once told me, "It's best to stay quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Published Facts

(July 23, 2001)

A well-known magazine editor wrote: "What irritates me is that people speculate wildly on the internet -- and announce the "facts" with certitude -- but never once bother to ask the source. All they have to do is e-mail me! But I think they would rather throw stones than do anything else. They're not after information, or knowledge, or truth, or understanding; they're after making themselves feel more important."

Steam Cleaning Tank Cars

(April 2, 2002)

I commented on the Steam Freight Cars group in answer to a comment that "In those days, steam was everywhere in a railroad yard."

UP maintained its tank car steam cleaning facility at Salt Lake City at least through 1978. They cleaned an average of 8 to 10 tank cars every day because of the nearby refineries. I got to know the old carman quite well. He was semi-crippled by an on the job accident and had spent over 10 years doing only one thing, cleaning tank cars. He had been a German soldier in World War II, and a prisioner of war to the Russians until 1949. He shared many war stories with me. I gotta say, that man hated Russians.

There were 6 cleaning stations along a ramp that was mounted at dome level, very similar to a tank car loading facility. The steam wands were lowered into the tank car through the open dome, the bottom drain was opened, and the steam turned on for about 4 hours.

Others commented that they assumed that besides the platform, there would be a boiler house and some sort of facility for handling the waste water? Another commented, "A waste water facility? Not in those days. They probably just drained it into the nearest ditch!"

The Speeder

(January 10, 2003)

Back on a night in spring of 1969, Rod Edwards, Floyd Jarvis, and Dennis Spendlove and I ran a motorized speeder up and down D&RGW's Wilford Brick Spur, which served Interstate Brick.

The backstory...

While I was still a senior in high school, and during one of my regular railfan visits of Rio Grande's Roper Yard, I noticed a speeder sitting in the section gang's off-track equipment yard near 21st South. I asked about it, and found that it had been wrecked and written off. But it was still in pretty good shape. I bought it for $1, and Rod Edwards and I figured out a way to get it from Roper up to his garage at his home in Sugarhouse, maybe somehow using my Dodge Power Wagon (an early SUV). Rod's home was on the stub of 11th East, just north of 27th South.

We moved the speeder into Rod's small garage and got it cleaned up. I made new seat cushions in my high school upholstery class. Mostly, what was wrecked was the cab enclosure, so the car we got running was just the open version. One night we pushed it about 300 feet south down Rod's street to 27th South, then then east about 100 feet to the D&RGW Interstate Brick Spur.

Floyd and I were the big guys, so we were elected to push the car to get it going. It took a couple tries, but we soon got it going -- putt, putt, putt, bang, putt, etc. We rode the car back and forth several times, from the brick yard at the south end, north to where the spur connected to the Sugarhouse branch, about two miles.

We commenced running it back and forth for about an hour. Sitting on my four new cushions, we all enjoyed the wind in our hair. We finally stopped at the Fairmont Lanes bowling alley at the spur's north end to get something to eat. Fairmont Lanes used to be on the curve near where the UTA Sugar House line ends today.

After having a milk shake to celebrate, we came out and found a couple Salt Lake City policemen with flashlights looking over the speeder, as it was sitting on the rails adjacent to the bowling alley parking lot. The policemen were obviously trying to figure out what to do. We told them we were the owners, and they told of receiving reports that some kids had stolen the speeder and were running it up and down the track. We clarified the situation and they told us to take it back where we started, and stop making noise. We were closely watched by the policemen as we pushed the car by hand back to Rod's garage.

To this day, I don't know why we didn't at least get ticketed. Likely all we did was trespass and disturb the peace with the pop-pop of the car's two-cylinder engine. And since D&RGW didn't even know we were on their tracks, we likely got off real easy. Great memory, but it was at night, so no photos.

I don't recall what happened to the speeder. It likely ended up at Heber, along with all the other stuff Rod Edwards claimed ownership to that was moved to Heber.

Locomotive Improvements

(December 12, 2003)

Brian Rutherford wrote: "If the reason for Tunnel motors is NOT to draw air in from a lower level in tunnels, can Jack explain why EMD and SP used "elephant ears" to test out the idea of drawing in air from down lower previous to building tunnel motors? I have to question this "revised" version of the tunnel motor reasoning as explained by Jack Wheelihan in Trains magazine."

I responded: The increased cooling capacity due to larger radiators came as a side benefit. I agree that the SP experiments, beginning with the mods to the SP and ex-D&RGW Krause-Maffei units, were indeed to pull cooler air from lower in the tunnels/snowsheds. After SP prevailed on EMD to do the T-2 model, everyone found that the larger air intakes, along with larger radiators, produced the quicker recovery "between tunnels" that Wheelihan wrote about.

Locomotive design is a very fluid and dynamic effort, and we locomotive geeks tend to put labels in each change (phase), when in fact, the changes are constant and on-going; some are simply more obvious than others. In my UP research alone, UP has been responsible for numerous improvements both inside and outside on EMD units since the late 1950s, and on GE units since the late 1980s. SP likely had its day in the sun with the T-2s.

I've been told that the improvements in extended range dynamic braking since about 1965 was in answer to UP's and other roads' use of dynamic braking as a train control device, out in the flat lands as trains made their way across the bumps and dips of the high plains. After Missouri Pacific took over UP, they soon found that dynamic braking was also well used descending down the bluffs of the river valleys.

Good Data vs. Bad Data

Posted to the RR Rosters discussion group on August 9, 2004.

Tom Lundeen wrote: "Once info is published, it's all but impossible to straighten it out for all of those reached by the initial publication. It's especially a problem for someone who comes upon the erroneous data years later."

This is what haunts me with everything I have ever had published. I get emails almost weekly asking for documentation for some data that was published 3, 5, or even 10 years ago. And then, there's the mistakes that creep into every article or book due to inadequate review due to publishing time constraints.

A new example is the article in the most recent "The Streamliner" from Union Pacific Historical Society. An article was completed about UP's GE U50 locomotives. Like many other articles beginning in the late 1970s, the author (or the editor in this case) called the units U50D, based on a Don Dover comment in late 1969. These units were never known as U50D by anybody other than railfan writers, and yet, 30 years later, that incorrect nomenclature still haunts us.

The same with UP's 500 class F9s. They were never F9M, or F3u. Never! But yet, because of some author or editor saying so, all these years later they are regularly referred to as these types of units. Same goes for SP's rebuilt SD40 and SD45s. They were never, never called SD40E or SD45E, by anybody but over-enthusiastic railfans, but to this day, we read about these units as having these model designations.

This is one of my hot buttons. He who writes the book, writes the history, whether it's good data or bad data. It's great if your ego needs constant stroking. But for me, all I want to do is get it right.

Railfans and railroad modelers are a habitual lot. It's hard to get them moving, but once the movement starts, there's no stopping it. "I learned what I learned then, and by damn, you ain't changing what I learned."

Railfan Photos

Posted to Trainorders.com, June 7, 2005

I kind of chuckle when a railfan goes on and on about how he wants his photos to last a lifetime, or even a century. I have thousands of 35mm slides, but there they sit. Most have only been looked at less than 5 times each in 30 years.

What do you do with your rail photos? Look at the slides, holding them up to a light? Show them to friends using a slide projector? Send them to some publisher to be published in a magazine or book? Sell extra originals? Make duplicates and sell them? Make prints and sell them? Make prints and hang them on your wall? It's your hobby - do what you want.

A couple months ago, I was given the opportunity to go through thousands of wonderful color slides taken by Roger Kingsford, for use in my upcoming second edition of Ogden Rails. I had always heard of his great photos of Ogden railroads, and seen a couple examples. Great stuff, but it turns out he was more of a scenery photographer than a rail photographer, with less than 60 actual railroad photos among the thousands of other photos. Roger died a couple years ago (at age 92), and his brother (age 83) has all of the thousands of Roger's slides. There are some absolutely beautiful scenery shots, but all they are, are great shots that can be used in the odd calendar here and there. The brother sincerely wants to do what is right, but is overwhelmed. They aren't worth anything, money-wise, other than to sell them to some stock photo house. But, Roger sure enjoyed taking the photos in the first place, which I think makes it all worth while.

I know one local railfan who has been extremely focused on locomotive photos for over 35 years. He has taken some great photos (many bordering on mind-boggling), and he has been trading slides for most of those 35 years, so he also has thousands and thousands of other people's well-exposed locomotive photos. What will he do with his slide collection? He says that when he dies, his wife can burn them all, for all he cares. Whether he is serious with that comment, or not, such an attitude is quite surprising considering how important his hobby is to him today.

In the past 5 years or so, I have virtually stopped taking rail photos. Why? Because I realized I wasn't doing anything with them. Yes, I have done several books and magazine articles, but they have used mostly other people's photos, which for a variety of reasons is like getting blood from a turnip. Everyone (with good reason) protects their photos and many simply won't send them to anyone. So, what do you do with your rail photos?

As for my slides, I have sold thousands, and have kept thousands more. What will I do with those that are left? I've left specific instructions that they should go to the local university's special collections, along with all my railroad research, where they will sit, well cared for, and likely never be looked at again.

Believing the Written Word

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups, September 28, 2005

Way back on August 20th, Joe Brugger wrote:

Like all sources; some are good and some are bad. It's up to the reader to figure out the difference. That's what a "scholar" is, someone who has wasted enough time going down alleys to see if they are blind, and can call the bullshit factor right away when reading something.

I have a co-worker who quotes the Bible regularly to prove or disprove whatever point is under discussion, and obviously believes whatever he reads that is printed to paper. Like many others who think that if they read it, it must be gospel, either on paper or on a computer screen.

This attitude scares the yikes out of me. As a railroad author, I am haunted by this way of thinking, as in, "Will this story be quoted forever as the definitive source?" I certainly hope not. I sincerely hope that anything I write gets someone either curious enough, or mad enough, to do his or her own research; either to add to what I write, or to prove me wrong. Please do. My favorite phrase is, "As always, comment or correction is most welcome." And I truly mean it when I say it. Not that I'm on some sort of crusade, but that's what I like about Wikipedia: it's open source nature so that anyone can add to, or correct what is published on any particular subject.

Historical Vandalism

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups, September 28, 2005.

Blair Kooistra wrote:

Like many other railroad historians, I've certainly done my share of dumpster diving. How about the time, during a light drizzle on a weekday morning many Aprils ago, I was ass-deep in Union Pacific's South-Central (old LA&SL) superintendent records, at the wrong end of a 24-inch cardboard tube that hung outside of the top floor of the Salt Lake depot. The stuff I was finding from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s makes me almost weepy-eyed today. Everyday stuff, like tearing down this roundhouse, or building that new spur. It was an unplanned opportunity, so all I had was a (dumped-out) grocery sack, which was soon filled to the brim. I was already late to get someplace else, and by the time I got back to the dumpster, a new one was in place. Whatever was in the first dumpster was gone. Gone forever.

My recent Ogden book gave me several more chances to see other people's stuff, and where they were keeping it. Like Blair said, in a box, rotting on a concrete floor. When I think of all the stuff the kids have thrown out after the old man died, oh my! Here's the scenario: Dad's been in the hospital for three weeks, and he passes on. In about a week, the kids go into his train room and say, "Now what?" They all know how important this all was to Dad, but none of them have the faintest idea of what to do with it. Depending on whatever else is going on in their lives, the photos, books, magazines, and other odd paper items, may or may not get to the local historical society. More than likely, for want of time or desire, it all goes to the dump.

A couple months ago, while en route to the annual convention in Denver, I helped the Union Pacific Historical Society go through boxes and boxes of stuff that gets donated to them every year. Most of it from the old railroaders in the Cheyenne area. By far, most of it is junk, like drink coasters or match books, but in almost every box there is a gem that truly adds to the documentary evidence of the Union Pacific Railroad. One recent example is in a box full of UP calendars from the 1990s. Among the rolled-up calendars, there was a calendar from 1953 and another from 1958. In the same box were some mimeographed sheets meant as a guide for dignitaries on board a business car. The sheets described the Wyoming Division in mind boggling detail, with full history and intelligent commentary about the business and traffic of the division at the time, in this case, 1963. Great stuff.

Of course, we are all free to do whatever we want with our stuff, and this *is* just a hobby. But any historian (of any subject) can tell you a story of how he or she found something that really told the story better, simply because someone kept that photo, or piece of paper. We should all be giving some thought to what happens to our stuff after we leave this earthly existence.

Trying To Write Right

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups, November 23, 2005.

In a discussion about researching and writing, Joe Brugger wrote on November 22, 2005:

This is my experience also. Before an article takes shape, or text for a book starts to firm up on the computer screen, I have always done the digital equivalent of 3x5 note cards, i.e., a Word file that is arranged in chronological order to help me understand my subject. Then, I make a trip. My most vivid was a couple years ago when I wrote about UP's Shay locomotives, and the mining district here in Utah where they ran (published by the Union Pacific Historical Society in The Streamliner, Volume 19, Number 3, summer 2005)

For the Tintic article, I had looked at what seems to be a hundred maps and photos of the area, and then there I was, standing on the abandoned grade between Eureka and Mammoth, where the UP uphill line crossed the D&RGW downhill line. The crossing is a flat patch of cinder covered sagebrush hillside, and suddenly I could hear the offbeat exhaust of UP 61 as it climbed the 3 percent up to Mammoth. The view out across the Tintic Valley is still astounding, and the ghosts of Shay locomotives were so vivid that the memory is deeply embedded forever. I had the complete attention of 10 or so whiteface cattle, but they will never understand.

(Read the text of the Tintic article)

Other times, I've been working on Utah coal mining areas in Carbon County. Although the mines are long gone, as well as the rail spurs and branches that served them, I have stood among the sagebrush in Spring Canyon and listened to the ghosts of Utah Railway and D&RGW coal jobs as they shove their empties up the canyons. Malleys and Alcos, oh my!

And of course, there's the magic spot on the curve at Echo as UP super power charges up the 1.14 percent, whether the power is a Challenger, a Big Blow, a Centennial, or today's SD70Ms, raw horsepower is raw horsepower. I've told my wife that she should spread my ashes on the ties of Number 2 track at Echo. She thinks I'm joking, but the thought of what's left of me mingling with the traction sand of up-bound trains headed east, brings a grin to my face every time.

As to the process of notes becoming something more final, I have come to realize that many of my projects will never come to final form, with maps and photos. So I made the decision a couple years ago to share my research notes with the world on my UtahRails web site. There they are, warts and all. The worst wart is the number of times that I failed to record where I got the information from. They are the result of 20-year-old research, back before I realized that I would not be able to remember where I got the information from. Oh well. At least the poor schmuck who follows me will at least have the barest of leads, so they can do better research.

What To Do With It All

(Originally posted to Trainorders.com on December 11, 2005.)

I have also been giving lots of thought about what to do with what's in my basement. I have one advantage of a family member being an employee of my state's archive department. By far, most of what they preserve is mandated by either federal law or state law. Items such as birth and death records, military records, and communications and correspondence concerning the state's lawmakers. The advantage here is that they are not rail-centered, and everything that comes into their hands is treated with equal importance. They have a nice new high-tech storage facility, and everything at least gets its own archive box, with proper indexing in their multi-layered computer database, which is also accessible by way of an internet connection.

My state (Utah) is small enough that there are three state entities that are equally capable of preserving my stuff: the state archives themselves, the state university (University of Utah), and the state historical society. All are tied together by virtue of shrinking state budgets, and management of all three communicate closely to make best use of those limited funds, meaning they want to avoid duplicate efforts.

My major concern is that the stuff be accessible from a public entity, funded by public monies. This will ensure that at least the stuff is accessible, although the trend lately with all archives nationwide makes it hard for anyone to simply drop by to do some same-day research. Planning ahead is essential.

The point of this is that my stuff will likely be donated to the University of Utah's Special Collections. But before I die, I am getting good, professional advice as to the best ways to organize all that I have, and to get the stuff as fully indexed as possible, including good summaries that non-rail people (namely archives employees) can readily understand. What it is and why it's important. Also, I am making the time and financial commitment to get the photos scanned and preserved to CDs and DVDs. I've spent the past 30 years researching various aspects of Union Pacific history, and the history of railroads in Utah, and among the stuff are the only copies of numerous paper items and photographic prints and negatives and color slides, and I really don't want any of that to be lost to some random dumpster.

Railroad Books I

(December 30, 2005)

In an email exchange with Larry Southwick, I wrote.

"That's why I do my UtahRails web site, to get the information out to anyone interested, without having to worry about page count and skyrocketing production costs. My previous four or five book projects have taught me the hard lessons of book publication and book publishers. I dream almost daily about obtaining funding for a good, well-researched book about Utah railroads. Its cost would be pretty steep, especially since I now have a couple solid points of reference on book production. The real costs come from photo acquisition and map production. Plus there is always that stick-in-the-mud thing called page count. More pages directly relates to higher costs. Right now, I estimate that the costs run about $100-$120 per page, and I can easily envision a 400-page book about Utah's railroads. My recent 172-page Ogden Rails book, published this year, cost $32,000 to produce, but it has lots of color photos, which drives the cost way up. Two other separate projects could include books about Utah's coal mining and the story of railroads and mining in Bingham Canyon."

Railroad Books II

(January 22, 2006)

The author seldom has control over who gets gratis copies. That's the publisher. Sure, an author can send a gratis copy to a contributor, but he usually has to pay for it himself, out of the his paltry royalties. A hearty thank you and proper credit is usually all that the author can afford, especially in our extremely limited railroad market.

Bad captions are the bane of an author. You can only do so much research, and usually the publisher is breathing down your neck with a printer's window staring him in the face. Time is money, and tweaking captions and factoids usually falls by the wayside. I can't imagine what a general technology writer goes through to get his information compiled. Sure he misses the mark on a shockingly regular basis, but at least he is getting the books out, and as long as the publisher sells books, they will continue to publish books. And besides, 99 percent of railroad books are never read anyway.

When, oh when, will my fellow railroad authors learn that railfans and railroad modelers buy railroad books for the pretty pictures. As I travel around the country, and talk to my potential buyers at various train shows, conventions, and general gatherings, I was at first shocked (and now accept) by the fact that very few railroad book buyers actually read the books they buy. They buy them for reference for some future project. When the book is first carried home, they flick through it quickly to admire a few of the photos, glance closely at about a third of them, read one or two captions, and put the book on the shelf. Acquisition completed. Library expanded. Done.

But I still write for the one or two buyers who are truly interested in the subject. It's just that I write web pages now, and have left the economics of railroad publishing in the dust. The realities and economics of railroad publishing are simply too frustrating. Now, my only limitation is time.

Roster Style and Format

(Posted to the Observation Car group at Yahoo Groups, on January 16, 2006.)

A question about roster style and format:

I did my first locomotive roster in January 1973. It covered the diesel and electric locomotives of Kennecott's Utah Copper Division. It was done on a regular typewriter. My first computer arrived in late 1986, but was characters on an amber screen. The software was Wordstar. Within a couple years I was using a Windows computer with WordPerfect. In late 1988 I started compiling my Utah railroads research into computer files, including the locomotive rosters.

From then on, all my rosters were formatted as tab-delimited columns in WordPerfect files. The first ones were what was used in Cockle's UP 1990 book. Next came the UP 1992 book from Hyrail, with the same file structure. By the time of the C&NW book in 1995, I had switched to Word and soon discovered that tables worked better than columns. For the files that were used for publication, I converted the tables to tab-delimited columns, but the actual roster files remained as tables.

When I did my first web rosters, it was by direct conversion of the tabled Word files, into tabled HTML files, although Word back then (and still to some degree today) tended to produce really bloated HTML files. I have since gained quite a bit of experience in manipulating HTML tables, especially using styles for the actual on-line presentation. Today, the actual roster data is in simple HTML rows and cells, with CSS styles governing how the data looks.

I have tried using formal databases on several occasions (including Access and FileMaker), starting way back in the late 1980s with DBASE II. But getting the reports to generate in a format usable in publishing was always the limiting factor. I always ended up exporting the report to a delimited text file and fixing it in either WordPerfect or Word. I have used Excel spreadsheets with some success, but always ended up exporting them into Word tables to be able to format the rosters into a usable format.

For anyone looking to start compiling rosters, I would recommend using tables in Word (or any other word processor). Using a database is too complex for the simple data we use in rail equipment rosters.

All my rosters today are done in HTML using Dreamweaver as the editor of choice. Editing a roster is very easy in Dreamweaver because it displays the HTML code as What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) tables, and I simply edit the data in the tables. Take a look at the source code for any of the rosters at UtahRails.net and you will see "the man behind the curtain".

Using this combination of software makes immediate publishing very easy, and I don't have to hassle with page-count as a limiting factor. Publishing to the web removes all of the limitations that publishing to paper brings with it, such as the limitations of page count, the lack of promotion, the lack of distribution, and the limited press runs. Of course, I have never seen my railroad interests as a potential revenue stream, which is good since there really isn't any money in it, except for fewer than five publishers who need to cover as broad a market as possible. Serving a broad market means that any "deep-dive" into any subject needs to be kept at a minimum.

Union Pacific Public Relations

Posted to the Union Pacific discussion group on March 12, 2006.

Union Pacific abandoned their public relations department about 20 years ago, in lieu of what they called a "Corporate Affairs Department". The result may have served the bean counter mentality and modern management types very well (if you can't measure it, good or bad, then don't do it), but from then on their stature with the public began to deteriorate and continues to suffer greatly. When will corporate America learn that there simply is no way to measure good will, until the time that you need it and don't have it.

I largely became a fan of Union Pacific back in the mid 1960s when I sent several letters to the public relations departments of several railroads nationwide, asking for information about their railroad. I think there were 16 letters, since my Mom made me reimburse her for the postage out of my weekly allowance. Regardless of the total number, I remember that I got responses from only about half the requests. Yup, UP's response was by far the largest and most in-depth. I still have all the booklets, maps and photos. I had two uncles working for UP at the time, who were both quite happy to answer my numerous questions. From then on, I was a UP man, and four years later as soon as I turned 18, I got a job with UP, which itself lead to a deep appreciation for the road's locomotives, equipment, and history.

That simple response from John Witherbee at UP, to me as a 14-year-old, literally changed my life. It likely cost UP somewhere in the $5.00 range to put the package together and send it to me. Of course, the costs of maintaining a Public Relations department and compiling and printing all the literature would be far in excess of that $5 figure. I have since learned that Mr. Witherbee, along with at least three other full-time employees, were completely and fully engaged on a full-time basis answering mail and working with the media keeping UP's name out there and keeping it's image positive. They stopped in the late 1980s, after trying to reduce costs by contracting part of the effort out. The bean counters still were not happy ("Can't measure it -- get rid of it."), so the department was forced to die a slow and agonizing death.

Bad press is a direct result of a bad and incomplete public relations effort, and UP has certainly been the subject of bad press coverage. The worst of which was the 1996 meltdown. We all saw the lead stories on CNN, NBC, and other media outlets about how UP's trains had literally stopped running. The causes were numerous and varied, but the news media did not care, and still do not care. It was a dramatic story and they all ran with it. It has turned out to be the first of several anti-railroad stories from several national media outlets.

Bad news stories are a direct result of a lack of understanding on the part of the storywriters. No one in the news media knows anything about railroads and the part they play in America's economy. When America's railroad corporations decided to focus on investor information and shareholder value, trying to cow-tow to the fickleness of Wall Street, they abandoned general public information. And the public (and the media) has responded in kind, with a general negative feeling for railroads, except that they run steam locomotives, passenger trains, and cabooses. Those three bits of operational details have been gone for 45 years, 35 years, and 20 years respectively, but not in the public's eye.

Who's fault is that? A very wise man once said, "As you sow, so shall you reap." Another cliche would be, "You get what you pay for." UP stopped paying for good public relations 20 years ago, and they seem to have struggled in the public eye ever since.

Lightning Stripes and Paint Schemes

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups on April 28, 2006

Way back on April 17, Dave Saums wrote:

Mike told me a couple years ago that his inspiration for the C&NW lightning stripe, and the later (and now-current) UP lightning stripe, was specifically his admiration for the NYC version.

Speaking of the UP version, the newest iteration was seen on several eastbounders and westbounders through Cheyenne these past weeks as Uncle Sam had me running all over southeastern Wyoming doing some magical tech things of which I cannot speak. But I did see lots and lots of trains. I don't take very many photos these days, but I did scramble a digital byte or two on a couple pure sets of brand new GEs. Those things are downright gorgeous, especially in packs of four. Building America, lightning stripes, yellow frame stripe, and wings, all in one place and still sticky fresh. Wow!

Giving It All Away

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups on May 25, 2006

Dave Crammer wrote:

I, too, "give it all away". On my web site are edited versions (with updates and corrections) of my 28 articles, and the text from my 11 books, plus lots and lots of other stuff. I tend to shy away from posting any accompanying photos, but I do have some on-line photos. I only have one outlet now for my paper-published work, but, like Dave, my previous works have gotten me contacts that still amaze me. I am truly surprised at the number of people in the railroad (and now, railroad contracting) business who buy railfan books and magazines, and even more surprised when they recognize my name from something that has appeared in print. The current gaggle are the folks building our local commuter rail network, known formally as Salt Lake Commuter Rail Constructors. Apparently many are boomers in the railroad construction business and when they arrived here in Utah from all over the country, they went looking for Utah railroading info, and found my stuff.

The same goes for new arrivals with Uncle Pete; you know, the guys who keep the railroad running. Notably, they went looking via Google, not by visiting local hobby shops and bookstores. In-print stuff was dutifully procured, but only after an on-line search found the results, mostly from sites such as Karen's Books or Joe McMillan. This hobby is changing, or at least the sources of information are changing. The slow ones will cry about it and point fingers; the quick ones will adapt and continue on.

Over the past 15 years, many people have willingly helped me, and they ask nothing in return, not even credit. I figure that the least I can do is share the results with other interested people. I'm in this to learn more about whatever subject may be at hand, and I share the results with whoever else is interested. It's nice that I can occasionally make some money, but that has never been the motivation.

First Time Bylines

Posted to Observation Car at YahooGroups on June 18, 2006

PDS wrote: "Do *you* remember the first time you saw your byline in print (for a photo or a story) and how you felt? And does the feeling change after you've been published a few times?"

My first time was as Trackside Editor for Don Dover's Extra 2200 South, back in 1973. Then again for the UP roster in X2200 in 1978/1979. The first "real" byline was in 1988 in Railroad Model Craftsman for my article about the Bamberger RS-1m. After that, they came kind of regular, with the last being last year for the second edition of Ogden Rails.

SP Motive Power Annuals

Posted on January 14, 2007

I had purchased the SP 1968-69 annual way back in 1972, just before I started building my first UP roster while sitting at a typewriter in my Salt Lake City apartment. My parents had just moved to the Bay area, and my first trip to visit them in 1972 also resulted in my first Joe Strapac motive power annual. I missed out on the 1967-68 issue, but bought every one after that.

I've started my first locomotive roster in 1972 with the local Kennecott Copper Corporation, but UP wasn't far behind. I learned roster building from one of the pros, Ken Ardinger, and he helped me tap into the Extra 2200 South gang, including Allen Copeland. In 1974, I discovered women, or as I may have mentioned before, one particular woman discovered me, so until I settled into a house in late 1976, the locomotive stuff got laid off for a couple years. When I came up for air and looked around, a phone call to Don Dover resulted in the five parter UP roster in X2200 in 1978-1979. I was working for UP until 1979, so roster data was easy to come by. The separation in 1979 was so bitter that it took at least five years to heal the wounds. A computer in 1986 brought back writing about history, and a 1988 phone call to George Cockle at UP in Omaha resulted in a restart of UP diesel roster building.

With each of the roster books I have been part of, I always lamented the weakness of keeping them up to date. So when the internet and web pages came along, I embraced them and learned how to wrestle them to do my will. After a total of seven UP roster books, each being an update of the last, I now do most of it on the web.

All this time, Joe's SP annuals remained as the standard to which I aspire. Photos are the meat of a roster book, and not being a photographer has always been a weakness in my efforts. I will always admire the depth and range of the photos Joe has been able to include in his books. That, and his ability to wrangle all those great photos to tell whatever story he is telling. Joe's first SP historic diesels books was my inspiration for a book about UP's switchers, but that book sold like a rock at a gravel pit. The poor sales of the first of a planned series about UP historic diesels made that one, the only one. UP simply is not SP. UP doesn't have the same loyal fans unless there's smoke coming out of the front end.

Oh well, I'll continue doing UP stuff until my head drops onto the keyboard. In the meantime, every SP book Joe does will automatically be added to my library. Keep up the good work Joe. You are still my inspiration.

Private Databases

(August 20, 2007)

A mystery person named Ralph wrote to Bob Kreiger at the UPHS office in Cheyenne: "I know I haven't attended a UP Convention in quite a while, but that doesn't mean I'm no longer interested. I continue to update and add data to my UP 100 year W/T roster database (10,000 records) and the All Time UP Passenger roster database over (9000 records)."

Yet another private database. They always brag about the number of records. I guess he plans on having UPHS publish it but somehow I doubt it. I am most likely rushing to judgement here, but sorry to say, private databases are one of my hot buttons.

As with the many locomotive databases out there, they're never quite ready for publication, so any plans to publish are always on hold. Also, they don't want anyone to "steal" the data, due to all the work they have put into it. I really don't know why so many people think their private databases seem to have some sort of monetary value. I was that way until about 8 years ago [1999] when I realized the total lack of potential markets out there. At about the same time, I discovered that web pages make great "first drafts". Lots and lots of people help me out after they stumble on the web site, and I try to keep the updates flowing based on their input. Just the other day, the owner of several UP passenger cars sent the dates of movement and purchase.

Lucin, A Boat [Book Review]

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on October 20, 2007)

(Book review published in Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 4, Fall 2001, page 360)

Tale of the Lucin: A Boat, a Railroad and the Great Salt Lake. By David Peterson. (Trinidad, California: Old Waterfront Publishing, 2001. 158 pp. Paper, $16.95)

Whether we admit it or not, all of our lives are touched by the history of America's railroads, and it can be an unusual involvement with railroads and railroading that makes us each aware of that association. In the case of author David Peterson, who spent some of his formative years on the Pacific Ocean at Eureka, California, his story began with a boat, the oldest boat in the fleet at Eureka’s dockside.

This wonderful 158-page book tells the story of small boat that started its life in 1893 as a passenger launch on San Francisco Bay. Along the way, this book also tells the story of boats and shipping on Utah's Great Salt Lake, and the story of the completion of one of the greatest engineering feats of the Twentieth Century, the construction of Southern Pacific's Lucin Cutoff across this famous inland sea. In 1902 the boat was moved by Southern Pacific to the Great Salt Lake to help build the earth-fill and wooden trestle across the lake, becoming the first of a fleet of both large and small boats operated by the railroad on the lake.

For anyone interested in the Great Salt Lake, or railroads in Utah, this book is a must read. It begins with full review of the boats and shipping on Great Salt Lake, including the early explorers, and early attempts by Patrick Connor to use his steamer "Kate Connor" to ship mineral ores from Stockton on the south shore to Corrine on the newly completed railroad line on the north shore. Included is a review of the resorts and their excursion boats. The book makes excellent use of maps and photographs as visual aids.

Chapter Two relates the story of the construction of the railroad's Lucin Cutoff, beginning with the early engineering studies, and the 1900 decision to begin construction. The Lucin Cutoff was completed in 1904, and the author was able to complete extensive research, and successfully relates many aspects of the cutoff's difficult construction features. Intertwined are bits of how Southern Pacific's fleet of boats, specifically, the Lucin, did their part in the cutoff's construction. Especially well done are examples of the challenges of using earth fill to cross what was, and still is, a lake that has at its bottom a thin salt crust layer atop "10,000 feet of mud." The delicate balance between the weight of the fill material, and the ability of the lake bottom to support the load is a battle that continues today.

Additional sub-chapters tell the stories of how the same construction crew, and their boats, built Southern Pacific's Dumbarton Cutoff across the southern part of San Francisco Bay, which was completed 1910. Under the heading of "What's Next," the author presents material about the maintenance of the Lucin Cutoff, and its complete replacement in 1959 with an all-earth fill. This new fill also used a fleet of boats, and these later sub-chapters relate the modern methods of moving massive amounts of fill through the use of large tugs and barges. Later sub-chapters bring the reader up to date with the subsequent removal-from-service of the original wooden trestle, and the reclamation of its virgin-growth redwood lumber.

An interlude chapter does an excellent job at what the author calls biographies of all the San Francisco Bay launches that served on Great Salt Lake. In it are histories of the individual boats that Southern Pacific moved to and from the bay area to Utah.

A final chapter returns to the later history of the boat Lucin, the survivor. This little boat was returned to San Francisco Bay with the completion of its namesake cutoff in 1904. The chapter contains numerous details of how the boat was converted from its original passenger launch configuration to a more utilitarian tug configuration. Its use on the bay ended with its sale, and movement in 1917 to Portland, Oregon, for service at the mouth of the Columbia River. In 1937, the tug was sold for its powerful gasoline engine, and in 1939 the hull was sold and converted from a medium-draft tug to a deep-draft fishing boat. This reviewer will leave the story of the boat’s final years to prospective readers to discover with their own reading of this most enjoyable book. The book ends with a note from the author seeking additional information, and a full bibliography that relates the author's journey for research for anyone who might want to follow in his path. A full index is also included.

In his prologue, the author states, "History does not neatly divide into separate topics and periods; it is a complex weave of all that has ever passed." Nothing confirms this statement better than this book. While it is the story, or rather a tale, of a boat, it is also the story a railroad and the Great Salt Lake, and of man's crossing of the lake. There is no better history than history placed in context, which this book does very well.

Publishing, Other Options

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on January 12, 2008)

Like others, I have been contacted by Arcadia, and after a couple phone calls, they sent me their author guidelines. A review of the guidelines made it obvious that I wouldn't be making anything more than a good meal at a fast food restaurant. They make all the money, but...

...maybe making money isn't my purpose. In most cases my motivation has always been to simply share my research. Having my own web site works great for that. In other cases, the subject requires photographs, so I've had to pimp myself to a publisher so that they can add the needed photos, but the costs of that (both real and emotional) have nearly undone me several times.

In my case, the subject of Arcadia's interest is my work concerning the railroads of Bingham Canyon here in Utah. I've got hundreds of photos (most are 8x10 negatives), and have access to lots more. Their guidelines show that I provide all the scans, and all the words, in their format.

This means that, as others have said, I do all the work and they get the money. But the benefit is that my book will get promoted and distributed. A friend in the railfan publishing field has mentioned that I should look at this like "chumming the waters," hoping that doing an Arcadia book could lead to more photos and "memories" that could end up in a much bigger (and more scholarly) book later, with larger photos and good maps.

With my current skills, I could easily write all the words, and scan all the photos. From comments I have seen on a couple forums, it would be best to provide Arcadia with minimal words and clearly identified photo locations, due to Arcadia's editing methods. Since all the work is then done, I'm thinking, why not simply do a web page, with an associated photo album?

The difference is distribution and market. An Arcadia book would be put into people's hands via local bookstores and gift shops, and would likely reach an audience that a web page never would. But a web page has a potential worldwide audience. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection, and a web search site, will likely find my web page (as they do today, with over 1500 hits per day). I guess it all depends on which market we are chasing. And I still can't decide what to do. I'll wait until all the photos are scanned, maybe sometime this year, to make that decision.

Doing an Arcadia book was a good experience for me, but I went into the project fully understanding what was involved. I knew that I would have to do all my own writing and fact checking, and with their limitation of more than 50 words, and no less than 70 words for each caption, it was a good exercise in writing. I did my own layout, which included creating a dummy version for photo placement. I was assigned three different editors during the six months or so that the book was in preparation, so continuity was a problem. I did all of my own scanning and image sizing (5x8 inches, at 350 ppi), which worked out very well. The dead line was the end of January 2011, and it was finished and sent to booksellers on August 1, 2011, as planned and promised.

In response to the above words, a suggestion was made that I look into on-demand, self-publishing, via something like Amazon's Kindle.

In response I say that they were assuming that everyone interested has a computer, or worse, that they even know how to use one.

I have found that a surprising percentage of people interested in the history of industrial technology (railroads, mining, etc.) tend to shun using a computer for little else other than email, if that. That fact may be changing, as those persons either die, or become more technically savvy, but they are a significant part of the market, whether I make any money off of them, or not.

Michael Seitz writes that "the bigger hazard of a purely on-line distribution is the obsolescence factor and archival longevity of digital data. What if the device is damaged or lost? If you want your research to remain accessible to a larger portion of the reading public, then you really should consider hard-copy publication. How many folks can access 3.5" floppies, or documents stored on old hard drives of obsolete computers?

He adds that when his "local newsletter went from hard copy to digital distribution, I found I hardly looked at the thing after initial receipt. There are other things I have downloaded that I do refer to, but all are one hard drive crash away from oblivion, or I will need to burn back up copies of the information on the media of the day.

"Why not both? Web for control and continual updating, and the book for long term information preservation?"

I agree completely, Michael.

As for the long-term reliability of digital technology, I can certainly attest that your hard drive *will* fail. Make your backups now!

Railroad Records

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on February 5, 2008)

While Union Pacific's records for its cabooses and other rolling equipment show retirement dates up to the late 1970s, the records after that time are spotty and mostly incomplete, especially for sales. It was at about this time that Union Pacific began using a central computer for all record keeping. Most of the caboose donations were recorded, at least up to about 1995. After that time, records are mostly nonexistent.

The fact that UP's own equipment records are so incomplete is sad but true. In these days of no government regulation, and focus on increasing shareholder value, costs at headquarters have been severely cut, and the most expensive cost is labor, especially having clerks record and maintain information that the government no longer requires (car ownership and usage). Cars and locomotives are merely assets to be bought and disposed of, kind of like the little car that the guy at the pizza place drives; when he needs a new one, he simply goes and gets the cheapest one he can get, and does not need to answer to anybody.

The Federal Railroad Administration still requires the air brake information to be recorded on the blue card in the locomotives, but only for the most minimal of safety reasons. The original blue card is in the locomotive cab, and a copy of the blue card is kept in Omaha, but there really is no hard emphasis to get the previous ownership right, or to get the date information correct. There is no penalty from the FRA if the information is found to be wrong, except for a minor slap-on-the-wrist of a one-time $250 fine. It's easy on the new stuff, but the leased stuff and stuff from merger partners generally falls by the wayside. And there is none of this safety requirement on cabooses after the 1989 decision by the Supreme Court that found that states could no longer require cabooses on all trains.

Getting information about railroad equipment is very hard these days. It is amazing how many records have simply been destroyed. They take up space (that needs to be paid for), and there is only the most minimal government requirement for them in the first place.

Almost everything we know about Union Pacific from 1914 to about 1995 comes from the railroad's records that it kept to fulfill the ICC requirement for valuation of its assets. The ICC went away in January 1996, and with it went the history of railroading after that date. UP has disposed of almost everything prior to the magic seven years of required records retention, and they are very focused on that constantly moving date. Now, seven years later, anything before 1996 is gone. I have seen many, many boxes with this notation: "Throw away after [some date]" with the exact date being seven years after the record was initially boxed up and kept.

To return to the subject of cabooses; I have copies of records up to 1995 (retirements and donations, but sadly, no sales). After 1995, there are simply no records available, other than whatever some individual clerk may have kept at their own desk, or in their own files, to make their own everyday job easier. As these people have retired (and many have, with several buyouts having been offered), either the person themselves threw the stuff away as they left, or the railroad disposed of it to clean out the person's desk and files. I have gotten to know several clerks over the years, and they all have horror stories about missing records since 1995.

What does this all mean? It means that current and future historians are in for a rough haul.

End of the D&RGW

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on July 26, 2008)

Steve Seguine wrote on March 8, 2002:

The spirit of the Rio Grande will continue to live as long as people remember it. That's the purpose of a historical society. The equipment that was painted in D&RGW colors may be long-painted to another paint scheme, but we can all remember what is underneath it all, next to bare metal. Don't get sappy about it, but don't forget either. One benchmark most fallen flag historical societies use for their coverage of any particular railroad, is if the property still exists, i.e., the roadbed and trackage where the trains ran. I suspect that UP will be using former D&RGW trackage for quite some time.

As to dates, the DRGW reporting mark was transferred to UP on June 30, 1997. This is the same date that all existing equipment ownership and leases were also transferred to UP. The D&RGW corporate existence went away also on the same day. D&RGW never merged with SP, it was only controlled by SP on October 13, 1988 (actually, D&RGW's parent company is the one that took control of SP, and SP, in-turn, took control of D&RGW). The same goes for UP and D&RGW. September 11, 1996 was the day that UP controlled D&RGW, along with SP, SSW, and SPCSL.

But, don't worry about the dates, or the company. It's the railroad we want to remember. The spirit of the Rio Grande is different for everyone, and we really should not be arguing amongst ourselves about when D&RGW ended.

I personally caught the spirit in 1964, when I spent an afternoon riding my bike along side a yellow stripe EMD GP locomotive on the Sugar House Local as it switched all the various spurs between Roper and Sugar House. The crew was very nice to a bike-riding 13-year-old kid, and explained all sorts of things about railroad operations. I was hooked, and as they say, the rest is history.

(The other memory is that I completely filled my bike's tires with sticker weeds, and had to walk it five miles home on two very flat tires.)

Railfans

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on July 26, 2008)

In response to several comments in a railroading forum about railroaders and drugs, a fellow railroad enthusiast named "Wadsworth" wrote on July 8, 2006:

I've been banging around this hobby for over 40 years, including working for Union Pacific for ten of those. I've come to know numerous professional railroaders who have a deep appreciation of their industry, well beyond it simply being a job to them. Many take photos, lots of photos, and read all the various railfan publications.

But, I have yet to meet a railroader who respects railfans as a group. Over the years I've known a couple national railfan magazine editors, who often meet professional railroaders at various symposiums and conferences. They tell of similar experiences in the battle between railfans and railroaders.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that while at UP (almost thirty years ago), on one or two occasions I mentioned to a visiting "railfan", a couple bits a really silly information, just for the entertainment value. I recall one instance back in the early 1970s when I mentioned that I had just seen a Big Boy pass though town. The response was a bit frantic as the guy promptly set out on the grand chase. I know of other professional railroaders who admit to the same thing. Railfans can be, at times, amazingly gullible.

On the other side of the coin, professional railroaders can be amazingly dense about anything other than their own immediate job activities.

Some of the worst are the few railfans who are also professional railroaders. These guys want to be seen as some sort of expert; a big fish in a small pond. They share information that they have access to through their jobs, and get all upset and defensive when someone applies common sense to the information's validity. I have learned on many occasions that, unfortunately, not every bit of information from a railroad employee is pure, or totally complete and accurate. This is free country, and you can say almost anything that tickles your fancy, but these guys should give consideration to the shrill and silly nature of their defensive responses. They likely want to be seen as professionals, not realizing that their responses prove otherwise.

Railroaders and railfans do not mix very well. Mostly because railroaders think railfans are a bunch of idiots. Unfortunately, there are a few railfans who continue to prove that statement. I know one railroader who calls them "fidiots". And another who calls them "vesties".

The worst example of a railfan is the guy who uses only "gossip" from fellow railfans, including today's internet newsgroups, as his only source of information, without applying any sense of real-world logic, or business sense to what he may hear or read. I've seen guys who get tears in their eyes when they talk about UP 844. Like Wadsworth said, "Sheesh!" I always try to remember that this is just a hobby. It's what I do in my spare time.

As for myself, I like trains, I like railroads, and I like Union Pacific. I know enough to respect their business decisions, but I also like to simply watch their trains. And I like to research and write about railroad locomotives, UP history, and my local railroads and their history. But I describe myself as a railroad historian, not as a railfan, and definitely not as a rail buff.

Local Museums

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on November 15, 2008)

Sorry to say, I've never been much of a preservationist, other than photos and books. I have found that too many people get wrapped up in keeping for all time and forever, their mother's wedding dress, or Uncle Wilbur's family bible, or Aunt Wilma's dress from when she was baptized.

Too much attention is paid to keeping the "one-only" stuff, rather than the every day stuff used by people to get through each and every day. The worst I've seen is at Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and at the Union Pacific museum in Omaha. Most of the stuff is insignificant junk that the museums dare not throw away because it was a gift.

I've been to many local museums that have one too many washboards and butter churns, or three gold watches, and seventeen different gold buttons. Obviously, I'm not a fan of local museums, so I'm not the person to ask for an encouraging word. But yet, I visit them at every opportunity.

My interest is the history of industrial development in Utah, with a focus on railroad-related industries. I continue to be hopeful when I do go to a local museum, hoping for old photos of what the world looked like back then. The best have been in Crockett, California, with its great stuff about the C&H sugar factory there, and the museum in Helper, Utah. Both are wonderful places to visit, but I'm sure there are several more. A recent trip through Torrington, Wyoming included another very good local museum.

Steam Locomotive Specifications

A fellow researcher wrote on February 8, 2009: "I have found that understanding how equipment was actually used leads to much understanding as to why it was purchased and later modified."

I responded: So true. The work comes from learning the context in which the equipment is used. Where? When? Why?

All the steam roster guys dutifully record the "specifications" of a steam locomotive: driver, cylinders, engine weight, boiler pressure, and tractive force. But apparently they fail to ask why. During the 1880s, 1890s and the pre-Harriman years, UP changed driving wheel size of almost all the 4-4-0s and 4-6-0s, either smaller or larger. But try to find out why. Speed? Power? Maintainability? Dunno. Harriman's team apparently did not believe in the concept. They simply bought all-new instead. Very little rebuilding in the Common Standard era, except changing all the 2-8-0 and 4-6-0 Vauclain Compounds to simpled locomotives.

Local History

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on March 28, 2009)

I've been asked for my thoughts about compiling the book with local history as its subject. Like any other project, you will have to decide what story you want to tell. No publisher will touch an "all-time", definitive history. So the challenge is the compromise that the author is willing to live with.

This is precisely why I do web pages. I'm in complete control, with no publisher breathing down my neck about page count and always trying to reduce costs. Plus there is no fear of a lack of promotion. Any good internet search engine will find a web site.

In my case I will always consider the Ogden Rails project incomplete. But there comes a time when you have to move on. I'd love to do a "Salt Lake City Rails" book, or a full history of Brigham Young and the railroads. But in reality, I doubt that such projects will ever see publication, other than in the form of loosely associated web pages.

About doing a local history book: maybe a simple update of a previously published project might be good enough, such as my personal favorite, Ira Swett's "Interurbans of Utah", but with more and bigger photos, and good maps. Doing day-to-day newspaper research almost always adds new information, but can be incredibly boring and time consuming. At some point you will have to ask yourself, "will it really add to the story I want to tell?"

As words of encouragement, continue gathering data, photos, and maps. At some point, you will have to decide what exactly you want to say. Hopefully that decision will come sooner rather than later, and you won't pass from this world and leave your family with the decision as to what to do with all of your research.

Dates in History

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on April 26, 2009)

History as pure dates is boring to many. But dates are the skeleton of history.

If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.

History in context brings the past alive.

History and Web Sites Are Fragile

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on April 26, 2009)

In June 2006, Ken Clark wrote:

In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.

Ken continued:

When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.

I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.

The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.

I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.

My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...

Metallic Smokebox Color

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on April 26, 2009)

In October 2006, Harry Wong wrote on the Espee List:

This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were re-tubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.

My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.

I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.

Asking Questions

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on April 27, 2009)

An anonymous stranger wrote in June 2006:

Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:

I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.

But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.

There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.

As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.

I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.

But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest, such as an extended correspondence with the son of Martin Blomberg, a design engineer at Pullman-Standard, and later at EMC/EMD almost from Day One.

The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.

The Truth Is Out There

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Blogspot on November 1, 2009)

Like everything on the internet, YouTube has some crap, and some great, funny and well done stuff. One recently viewed example is that all of the Super Bowl commercials are on YouTube, as well as lots of other clips of this and that, and even some other stuff. Whatever you want, even soft porn, and dumb ass guys doing stupid things.

For a place to start, click at the bottom "Browse Channels", then pick "Best Of YouTube".

(Videos Popular On You Tube)

Here is another example of why I like YouTube:

(Reporters Blow Whistle on FOX News)

The truth is out there. We just have to find it. And the internet makes that a bit easier. Stuff like this is why "they" are always warning us about the dangers of the internet. "Dangers" indeed -- the truth always hurts. The people with an agenda hate that so many people have video cameras and cell phone cameras, and an internet connection.

As a historian, all I ever want to find is what really happened. Every time I get going on research on just about any subject, I soon learn that it is usually one person's personal agenda that drives any particular event, throughout history. And everyone around them either agrees with that agenda, or goes along in the interest of avoiding confrontation, or keeping their job. Peel away the layers of history, and it's always about money and power. "You will do what I want you to do, because I think it's a good idea."

Conservatives want to limit your choices to what they think is good and right. Liberals want to offer you so many choices that nothing gets done, because in life's choices, nothing is easy.

The best we can ever hope to do is EDUCATE OURSELVES, make the decision and hope for the best. My favorite defense comes from Steve McQueen's character in the movie The Magnificent Seven when he said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

SP Locomotive Records

(January 8, 2010)

As strange as it may seem in this day of computers and digital records, when SP was taken over by Rio Grande in 1988, their record keeping went out the window. Then when the ICC went away in 1996, they truly had no reason to stay on top of the records of their locomotive fleet, and they actually threw away boxes and boxes of records that had been carefully packed and moved from San Francisco to Denver when the headquarters moved.

The retirements and sales in the 1990 to 1996 time period were all pretty much unrecorded, so with the help of a couple ex-SP guys who stayed with UP, and who had the sense to keep their paper records, we put together a pretty good picture of SP's diesel fleet up to the merger with UP. It was a bear to figure out, but we got it done and the results were published in the 1998 UP Locomotive Directory. Joe Strapac used much of the pre-1996 stuff for his later books. All of it is preserved and presented on UtahRails.net.

Shoving Cars

(Posted to Trainorders.com on October 10, 2010.)

In the General Code for Operating Practice for railroad safety, Rule 6.5 states: "When cars or engines are shoved and conditions require, a crew member must take an easily seen position on the leading car or engine, or be ahead of the movement, to provide protection."

My own oops came back in 1979 when I was protecting a shove of ore cars on Kennecott's Utah Copper Division. I was second man on the midnight shift on the Magna Yard Turn, with one of the old Nevada Alcos as power. One of our regular jobs was to switch the Magna car shop to swap the bad orders for the repaired cars, about 10-15 cars every night. I was protecting the far end of 12 cars when at the last moment I noticed from my perch up on the car that a switch was against us. Oops. I was out of sight from the hogger and did not have the radio (only one per crew, and the foreman had it). The standard "big hole it" signal was to take off our hard hat and wave it above the top of the car. We were in a bit of a hurry and two cars got through the switch before we stopped. One was on the ground and the second was half-off and half-on. We were all greenhorns except for the hogger, Holly Nielsen. He was an old Bingham & Garfield guy from the late 1940s who liked graveyard shift. We were standing around scratching our heads at 2:30 am, when Holly walks up and simply says to back up and hope for the best. It worked and no one found out. The switch was sprung, and we had to use a six-foot pipe to pry the lever out of the switch stand, and to bend the lever back to where it belonged.

And then there was the other time I was on the far end of the Fogarty (Magna) dumper, uncoupling cars after they shoved through, two at a time. We had to make sure the knuckle was open on the cars as they rolled away. It was production work, dumping cars as fast as possible. An accident waiting to happen. One night I was busy getting a stubborn knuckle to stay open on a cut as they rolled away, and did not notice that the cars on the dumper had rolled out about two feet. The guy at the other end gave the dump operator a green light and up the cars went. The end hanging out made a big crashing sound as it hit the dumper frame, shaking the whole building. It wasn't the first time, nor I'm sure the last time. But it was my job to catch it and I missed it. I learned some new words that night from my foreman, the dump foreman, and mill foreman. The whole Magna mill was down for four hours because they could not dump while they fixed the damage. All because of Don. Much to my surprise I wasn't fired on the spot, but I had a long talk with Bruce Morrison, the boss of Ore Haulage the next morning. He had hired me, and was willing to overlook the on-the-job hard lessons. When I quit a month later, he actually tried to talk me out of it, saying I was a natural railroader, and not at all like the yucks they were getting off the street.

Kennecott was not an ICC or OSHA railroad. It was a mining railroad and under MSHA rules, which were a lot less safety oriented than ICC/FRA/AAR. Loose grab irons, in-op coupler pins and handbrakes, leaking air brakes. The list goes on. After almost ten years on Union Pacific, I couldn't take the lack of safety and brutal hours, which were 8-on and 8-off. It was very good pay, but at what cost. I quit after just three months.

Railfan Books

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on October 25, 2010)

Back in January 2010, I completed a brief history of Montana Union Railway, the line between Butte and Garrison, Montana that is still today owned by Union Pacific but leased to BNSF. This was all done to add some background to five steam locomotives that ended up on UP, but it turned out to be a very interesting story.

Montana Union Railway

I'm sure there are a couple very nice magazine articles out there, plus a couple very well done books on the various subjects I covered in this very brief history. But the challenge is finding them. Sad to say, for something like this where I merely want to fill in some background history for five steam locomotives and how they were used before coming to UP, it really does not make much sense to spend $40-50 to buy a book to glean 17 words from it. And in reality, this is pretty detailed stuff about a very small region, so I doubt any railfan author has actually written anything about Montana Union operations. Add to that, most railfan books are locomotive picture books, not railroad history books.

While we are all interested in locomotives, I like to put locomotives in context with the railroad that owned them, and how and why they were used. This Montana Union project was all done using stuff I've accumulated over the years, mostly about UP, and about railroads and railroad-related industries here in Utah, plus a lot of Google searches. The Google searches found several old books that are part of the Google Books project, and which date from before their 1923 copyright cutoff.

Union Pacific U50s

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on October 25, 2010)

A recent note from John Gezelius on Trainorders.com about UP's U50s reminded me of a couple memories I thought I'd share...

I started at Union Pacific in October 1969 as an apprentice in the Salt Lake shops. My first shift was from midnight to 8am. One of the jobs I helped on that first night was to change the air reservoirs on a U50. They were mounted under the walkways, and because the U50 was so tall (walkways were eight feet above ground level), we had to have the unit pulled right next to the shop door so that we could use forklift to remove the reservoirs. It took us all night to do the four reservoirs (three along the fireman side and one at the rear on the engineer side) because of the height above the ground, and having to use a forklift and step ladders. The U50s were in service from 1963 to 1977.

After I became a journeyman, a U50C came into Salt Lake with one of its two very large radiator fans inoperable. The fan bearing had seized and since the fan was so large, it kept spinning and self-destructed, taking out the fiberglass ducting that surrounded the fan. The flying pieces of fan also dinged the bottom of the radiator sections pretty bad. There was also lots of damage to the equipment blower and air compressor that were mounted adjacent to the fan gear box, all within the radiator intake compartment. The unit was in the shops for well over a month while the replacement parts were purchased, delivered and installed. My job was to install the fiberglass duct ring, which was over six feet in diameter. It was not designed to be put in after the locomotive was assembled and definitely not from the top through the radiator grille opening, so we cut the ring in half and drilled some additional mounting holes to ensure a solid mount. Removing the beat-up duct and installing the new duct took two shifts. The U50Cs were in service from 1969 to 1978.

Bad Captions

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on November 26, 2010)

Anyone who writes captions for photos in a book soon learns that it is one of the hardest tasks of the process. There is the temptation to simply duplicate the information in the text, but I always thought that since the photos add to the text, the photo captions should add to the photo, discussing in added detail what the photo shows. But in a book with lots of photos, the task of writing captions will wear you down to be a grinning idiot. I've done it many, many times in my books and magazine articles, and it's a bear. For my UP roster books from Withers, the publisher and I decided to do minimal captions: unit number, date, and location. I know it seems to be a cop-out, but in this case I did not have the photos, and he didn't have the background in UP's diesels to write good captions. One solution might have been to send me the photos and I could have written the captions, but we were unsure as to which photos we would/could use due to page layout, and photos were coming in right up to the day the manuscript went to the press. But we both agreed that the minimum should be date and location.

Tony Thompson wrote on the Steam Freight Cars discussion group on June 21, 2008:

... and again on May 24, 2009:

I know one of the archivists at the Utah State Archives. She has related numerous horror stories about the items that have been dropped off at the state historical society's doorstep. They have to process them in some manner, and most archivists haven't a clue about what something may, or may not be. Garbage in/garbage out. They try to provide proper labels, but without good source data, they really struggle. Hence when an "expert" starts providing *any* input, it is usually taken because he appears to know what he is talking about. Being a published author really helps. And having a web site that they can check right away. Not so much for the snob factor, but that it makes it easy for the archivist to do an independent background check, if they so choose, which they usually don't.

A good case can be made for us historians all to get to know the librarians and archivists we deal with. Build a trusting relationship. Try to swap information for information. Give, as well as take. It's amazing what may come your way as duplicates and extras from their collections, plus the occasional "guess what we just found" phone call.

Captions are only as good as the research; some are a lot better than others. There is still so much to research and write about. The biggest challenge is to find what has already been written. The next biggest challenge is to capture for future use, what is happening right now.

Utah Copper/B&G AAR Reporting Marks

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on December 11, 2010)

Prior to 1948, Utah Copper Company owned the Bingham & Garfield Railway, a common carrier that was used to move its ore from the Bingham Canyon mine, sixteen miles north to the mills on the shore of Great Salt Lake. In 1948, they built their own, private electrified railroad. The B&G trackage was abandoned, its corporation was dissolved, and its operating organization became the Ore Haulage Division. It was the OHD that bought the big electrics, and later operated the SD40-2s. On July 1, 1984, OHD was shut down, and the SD40-2s were leased to Canadian Pacific, then to British Columbia Rail (BCOL) on a ten-year lease. They were later sold to Helm. With the SD40-2s gone, the railroad was operated with the tall-cab GP39-2s until the new slurry pipeline started up in September 1988.

Utah Copper and B&G swapped steam locomotives, and electric locomotives, back and forth as operations in the mine, at the mills, and the railroad between them, waxed and waned. Several B&G steam locomotives were assigned to Utah Copper for operation, and several Utah Copper electric locomotives were assigned to B&G for yard and car dumper service. How to refer to them in photos?

The best answer is to simply write about the changes. Reporting marks or abbreviations simply don't work in cases like this. In photos of the equipment, the only abbreviation is UCC, for Utah Copper Company. Until it was dissolved in 1948, all internal documents show the B&G as the Ore Delivery Department, or ODD. After 1948, it became the Ore Haulage Division, or OHD. After 1941, although still a common carrier, the lettering on the B&G steam locomotives was changed to KCC.

My reference to UCC comes from a photo of a company-built ore car that was used on the former steam-powered Bingham & Garfield. The original Utah Copper reporting mark, UCCX, is currently assigned to Union Carbide Canada.

An interested observer wrote via email in July 2008, concerning Utah Copper and Kennecott:

Some railfans and magazine editors are convinced that any reference to Utah Copper after 1941 was wrong, wrong, wrong. (The railroads and their trade press are all wrong; we railfans are the only source for accurate and up-to-date railroad information.) One particular editor has always been convinced that every piece of railroad equipment must display a reporting mark, and is always looking to the appropriate reporting mark to use on slide labels and in photo captions.

I have always felt that we should simply use the recognized abbreviation, i.e. N&W vs. NW. It's kind of like, instead of using a company's name, only using a company's stock market ticker tape abbreviation, or using only the zip code two-letter abbreviation whenever we write a state's name. Bad abbreviations are the same as saying, "I'm too lazy to look this up." Of course, they will say they have a dead line.

As for having any idea why people insist on labeling Kennecott units as having KCC reporting marks, the best answer is simple laziness.

It's easier to write KCCX when we should be writing Kennecott. People like to abbreviate, and what better abbreviation to use than the AAR reporting mark. Except that the AAR reporting mark only applies to railroad rolling stock involved in interchange, including the brief movement of non-operating locomotives. They are not (and never were) intended to be a catch-all for railroad name abbreviations. I'm a bit sensitive to pointless abbreviations and acronyms, since I work with the military, who excel at pointless acronyms.

I can't find any reference to any Kennecott reporting mark other than KCCX. The white Kennecott acid cars still use the KCCX mark. Here is the only current listing of AAR reporting marks that is active. The other listings have apparently gone inactive:

AAR Reporting Marks

In the UP/SP merger hearings by FRA, when BNSF was given overhead, local switching, and trackage rights to UP and SP customers in Utah (which would have become a one-railroad state), they always used "Kennecott", without any abbreviation. In their guidelines for accident report preparation, the FRA doesn't show a KCCX abbreviation.

I checked my photos of Kennecott units being shipped to MPI in Boise for their rebuild in the 1992-1994, and none exhibit any reporting mark. The road numbers were eight feet high on the sides of the hoods. The outbound units were lettered for Kennecott Copper Corporation, and the inbound units were simply lettered as Kennecott.

I guess my point is that we should not use any AAR reporting mark for anything Kennecott, other than the hundreds of white acid tank cars that are involved in national interchange service.

Clearfield Navy Supply Depot Utah

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on January 10, 2011)

I've been going over some really old notes and came across these two bits. They are the only data that I have ever seen that put U.S. Navy locomotives in land-locked Utah. Both are from the base newspaper for Clearfield Navy Supply Depot.

USN 65-00256 is shown in a photo dated July 4, 1958; caption says it is one of three locomotives assigned to NSD Clearfield.

USN 65-00181 is shown in a photo dated September 26, 1958.

I think these were both Baldwins, but I failed to note the model, or even the builder (I guess I thought I'd never forget). I sure wish I had at least Xeroxed the photos, but I didn't.

Here is some information about NSD Clearfield, from the December 27, 1957 issue of that same base newspaper:

NSD Clearfield was dedicated on April 10, 1943
841 acres, 68 storehouses, 110 buildings
40 miles of railroad track
Construction began in June 1942, and was completed in April 1943
Six railroad locomotives
Peak operations were during WWII, with 4,108 carloads
Two large 300,000 gallon wooden water tanks were replaced by a single 200,000 steel water tank in February 1959.

NSD Clearfield was closed in 1962 and is today known as Clearfield Freeport Center, a large commercial manufacturing and warehousing facility.

Utah was the home of at least six other very large military facilities, for all branches of the military. It was (and still is) the hub of cross-country rail lines and highways. It also helped that its politicians were very well placed in the Democratic power structure.

Below is some information I researched back in 2003 from a web-page biography of Jesse H. Jones, the head of federally funded Reconstruction Finance Corporation, whose subsidiaries included the Defense Plant Corporation, which itself was responsible for numerous new railroad locomotives.

Under the newly passed legislation, the RFC was authorized to set up subsidiaries (federal agencies) to accomplish the goals of the preparedness program. Among the myriad of organizations established were Defense Plant Corporation, Defense Supplies Corporation, Metals Reserve Company, Rubber Reserve Company, United States Commercial Company, War Damage Corporation, Petroleum Reserves Corporation and Defense Homes Corporation. During World War II, more than 20 billion dollars was disbursed for the war effort under Jones. In addition, he was instrumental in establishing the new synthetic rubber and magnesium industries. Below are some highlights of Jones' efforts through these agencies to help America build its great "arsenal of democracy."

Defense Plant Corporation -- Much of American industrial expansion during World War II was financed by the RFC through the Defense Plant Corporation. The War and Navy Departments, the Office of Production management, the War Production Board and the Maritime Commission would request what they needed and in turn, the DPC would ensure that the plants were constructed, equipped and operated. Jones negotiated the contracts for the construction and operation of the plants and managed the corporation along with Emil Schram and Sam Husbands, both of whom were presidents of the organization during the war.

From its inception in August 1940 through 1945, the Defense Plant Corporation disbursed over nine billion dollars on 2,300 projects in 46 states and overseas. Most of this money was used to build and equip new factories and mills. In general, the plants were leased to private companies to operate. In spending these billions, the government acquired a dominant position in several industries, such as aircraft manufacture, nonferrous metals, machine tools, synthetic rubber and shipping.

The materials and supplies produced during the war ranged from tiny jewel bearings to giant guns, tanks, ships and airplanes. In fact, about half of outlays were used directly or indirectly for aviation. Next to the Geneva, Utah steel mill, the most expensive single Defense Plant Corporation project was the $176,000,000 Dodge Chicago plant, which manufactured aircraft engines for the B-29 and B-32 airplanes. The plant's nineteen one story buildings stretched over 6,300,000 square feet -- about 145 acres -- of floor space. It was so large that it had its own steel forge and aluminum foundry and could take in raw material at one end and turn out finished engines at the other.

Defense Supplies Corporation -- Jesse Jones felt that Defense Supplies Corporation was the most versatile of the agencies set up under the RFC. He described it as a "catch-all, go-anywhere, do- anything organization." Over nine billion dollars in buying, lending and subsidizing was disbursed in the United States and 45 foreign countries. More than five billion dollars was used to buy, stockpile and distribute 200 kinds of commodities, ranging from abaca (Manila hemp), to silk and wool.

The Unit Rig Story

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on January 25, 2011)

My quest for information about the large haulage trucks used in Kennecott Copper's Bingham Canyon mine has brought contact with Mr. Jerry Shelton, retired Vice President, Sales, of the former Unit Rig and Equipment Company, makers of some of the largest mining trucks. Mr. Shelton has graciously shared his self-published history of the company, named "The Unit Rig Story."

The Unit Rig Story

This is the first time this company's history has been told in such a complete manner. It's a fascinating story of one company's groundbreaking innovation, as well as the story of that same company's decline at the hands of corporate raiders of the late 1980s.

Mr. Shelton has given his permission to have the text of his book presented here at UtahRails.net, and to make a PDF version also available. Thank you Jerry.

Additional information about Unit Rig can be found here, including its purchase by Terex in 1988, along with the purchase of Terex by Bucyrus International in 2009. In 2010, Caterpillar has made an offer to purchase Bucyrus.

The Heber Creeper and Me

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on February 10, 2011)

Back in 1968, while still in high school, I was a member of the Golden Spike Model Railroad Club. The membership included Rod Edwards, Dennis Spendlove and Gordon Wheeler. I made several railfan trips with them, and spent a lot of time with them as we were building models and running the railroad at the Golden Spike club. The group included their friend Chick Nielsen, and all four of them were involved in the movement of the first rolling stock to Heber in 1970. In 1968, I was with Rod on one of his many trips to Heber as he was building support for the effort. He and I found the bars used on the agent's window in the D&RGW depot, laying in the grass outside of the building. That cage was used almost immediately as the ticket window at the Golden Spike Model Railroad club at the state fairgrounds.

I was among the group of about 15 guys that went to Tooele and loaded all the steam locomotive stuff that Tooele Valley had donated to the guys in Heber. I especially remember how excited we all were when among the items donated, there were two complete air pumps. Dennis Spendlove drove the truck (owned by Don Reimann) from Tooele to Heber, and I rode along. It was a great day. Dennis and I were good friends, but after he moved to Heber to help get the railroad up and running, we lost touch while I focused on model railroading and railfanning in and around Salt Lake City. He and I renewed our friendship in 1981 when he visited my model railroad. Within a couple weeks we spent a day chasing UP 3985 on one of its many trips to Utah. I was really saddened to hear later that he had taken his own life.

I graduated from high school in 1969 and got a job as a boilermaker for Union Pacific in their Salt Lake diesel shop within six months. I worked there for 10 years, but quit for a brakeman's job on Kennecott's Ore Haulage railroad. Much to my surprise, after losing touch with them over the intervening years between 1970 and 1979, I began working with both Gordon Wheeler and Chick Nielsen, and with Chick's Dad, Holly. They were all working as engineers on the same railroad. I worked the Magna Local a lot, and Holly Nielsen was the regular engineer. Gordon worked the Magna dumper job, and we spent a lot of down time talking about our common interests as we waited for a green light on the dumper. Chick was a mainline engineer, and he taught me many valuable lessons about staying safe as the rear-end brakeman, a job that was kind of scary because I was alone for the entire trip. It was a great job and I enjoyed working with real railroaders, hearing all their stories. But it didn't last due the plunging price of copper in 1979, and I was laid off after just two months. Even though the change in jobs forced a radical change in my life, I've had a soft spot for Bingham & Garfield and Kennecott ever since.

When I hear of the trains of Heber, or read about some special event taking place there, I can't help but recall all of the hard work that those guys put into the enterprise during those very early years. I recall the time I spent with them, and grin again at some of the jokes and good times we shared. The variety of items that the four of us "rescued" from the dead line at Bingham makes me shake my head in wonder these 40 years later. To this day I often wonder what happened to all that stuff.

Modeling and Railfan Magazines

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on February 10, 2011)

Like most railfans and railroad modelers in the west, I looked forward to the monthly magazines. With titles like Model Railroader, Trains, Railfan & Railroad, and Railroad Model Craftsman, we all got a regular update to what was going on in the railroad world around us. I bought my first Model Railroader magazine in July 1966 at a local drug store a short bicycle ride from my home. It was in the the local strip mall that included stores such as an Albertson's grocery store, a five and dime store, a Sherwin Williams paint store, and a department store where our parents bought their household goods and clothes for us kids. It was the Walmart of its day. This was in the early and mid 1960s, and I was exploring the world that was within bicycle riding distance.

My brother had several American Flyer models that were stored away, but still readily available to be looked at and appreciated. A neighbor across the street had a Lionel setup on a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood, and we spent hours and hours watching the trains go round and round. I liked trains, and two uncles who worked for Union Pacific made sure that I learned all sorts of fascinating and wondrous things about trains and railroads, meant to keep my interest alive.

On a day in October 1965, my brother (who had his drivers license) and his friends went to Keith's Hobby House in downtown Salt Lake City, and they let me come along. I think they were looking for parts for their plastic model cars and their electric slot cars (a hobby that was the rage at the time), but as soon as I saw the model trains, I ignored the airplanes and the cars, and spent the entire time looking at the variety of model trains. I recall that in the magazine racks, there was a wondrous selection of magazines for both railroad and model railroad interests. I only recall the October 1965 date because in later years I saw the magazine cover and recognized it as the first Model Railroader I ever saw.

When I discovered Model Railroader, I soon realized that this was really something amazing. There was a whole world out there, and trains were part of it. I had very little money, but bought magazines when I could. Then I got my first job in 1967, and as they say, "the rest is history." The first magazines were modeling magazines, then as I was able to get around by driving, I wanted to learn about the real trains I was seeing. My Uncle John gave me a pile of Trains magazines, and I wore them out by reading them, and re-reading them. I joined the newly formed Golden Spike Model Railroad Club in early 1968, and the friends I made there readily shared their knowledge as well as their assortment of magazines.

I started work with Union Pacific within a month of turning 18 (their minimum age), and with money in my pocket, I became a regular customer of the local hobby shops. In October 1970 I discovered Extra 2200 South, the locomotive news-magazine, as well as Pacific News, which kept me up-to-date on western railroading. I kept them all, and re-read them on a continuing basis. Only recently, and due to space considerations, have I begun thinning out what became a collection of magazines that spanned what was then, the entire 35 years of my railroad interest.

Western Railfan Publications

Each of these publications were labors of love by each of their publishers. They were all essentially intended to get the news out as soon as possible, based initially on door-to-door surface mail, then on telephone communication and early dial-up email communication.

This information about Western Railfan Publications started back in 1989 and early 1990 as I was doing a page-by-page review of various printed sources of railfan news, including CTC Board, Pacific News, Pacific Rail News, Flimsies, and The Mixed Train. These were newsletters meant to get the news out to local and regional railfans about what was happening in the world of western railroads and their locomotive fleets. At the same time, I was reviewing issues of the national locomotive news magazine, Extra 2200 South, which started in 1961 as a similar newsletter.

The effort was to gather and glean whatever I could about Union Pacific's locomotives, with the information being blended with the large volume of information I had collected from sources within the company itself. The sources were combined and used in the 1990 and 1992 published versions of my Union Pacific locomotive rosters. I took a hiatus during the early and mid 1990s, then succumbed to the siren song of a Union Pacific locomotive roster when UP took control of SP and D&RGW in late 1996. That effort resulted in the Union Pacific 1998 Locomotive Directory, as well as the later 1999 and 2000 editions.

By the late 1990s, several web sites were established that allowed "bulletin board" communications among railfans, including such email discussion groups like OneList, which became eGroups, then YahooGroups. In addition, there were separate web sites that specialized in railfan news, with one of the first being Trainorders.com.

As the on-line readership of "the boards" increased, the subscriber base for the "railfan rags" decreased. The biggest complaint was usually given as a lack of current news in the printed-to-paper publications. Some took longer than others to pass away, but all have fallen by the way side, casualties of the internet age.

Just like all things in life, there's a "but." As easy as it may seem, blame cannot be fully laid at the doorstep of the internet. As in any business community, there are good decisions and bad decisions, and businesses fail for a wide variety of reasons. Even in the very small community of railfan publications, rumors persist of failure due to cheating and partnerships gone bad, as well as profits being wasted.

Century of SP Steam

In an exchange on the Espee List in May 2011, Glenn Joesten wrote, "What is the current availability of Dunscomb's 'A Century of Southern Pacific Steam Locomotives?' Price?"

I have the Third Edition, First Printing from July 1984. I was surprised when I bought it back on 2008 (for just $30!!) that it had the map supplement, plus a six-page "Amplifications, Additions and Corrections" foldout dated January 1984 and compiled by Guy L. Dunscomb, Arnold S. Menke, and Joseph A Strapac.

This book was one of the first railfan books I ever bought, back in 1970. This was just after high school; I had just started working for Union Pacific, and the money was burning a hole in my pocket. In the years since, I've been through many life changes. During one of them that included no income, someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and I sold it. A decision I've regretted ever since. Given the history between me and that particular book, when I saw it on a list of used books, I simply bought it, regardless of condition. I was very surprised when it arrived, with the supplements included, and in very good condition, with its jacket fully protected by a nice Gaylord No. 14 jacket cover.

When I first bought the book in 1970, I was so taken by SP steam that I had my Grandfather make some wood inlay pictures of the locomotive silhouettes used on the chapter headings. He prided himself on only using natural colored woods, so he used a very blonde, light wood for the backgrounds, and ebony for the silhouettes. The wood itself is 1/28 inch thick, mounted to 3/8 inch particle board. The finished pictures are about 12 inches high and vary between 28 and 32 inches in length, depending on the locomotive shown. I chose the Pacific (page 163), the Articulated (page 265), the Mountain (page 289), and the General Service (page 301), which I modified to have the dual headlight casing. He died in 1984, but wherever I have lived, they have been proudly hanging for all to see. Over the years, they have aged to a lovely patina that almost takes your breathe away.

Everybody's Wrong

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on May 30, 2011)

Back in July 2000, Robert X. Cringely wrote in his "I, Cringely" column about the history of high tech and America On-Line. In his column, called "Everybody's Wrong," he compared a recently published article in BusinessWeek magazine, on the subject of AOL's history, with a video tape of a brown bag lunch presentation by Mark Seriff in 1996.

Cringely's comment about whose version of AOL's history historians will buy, Marc Seriff's or BusinessWeek's, in which he concluded that it will be BusinessWeek's, is absolutely correct. Why? The BusinessWeek version, right or wrong, is published and readily available. Mr. Seriff's version is only available either from a person who was at the presentation, or from someone who has the video tape, or from Cringely's column. The value of an informed eye-witness is priceless.

As an historian, I spend my time researching and writing about business and industrial history. I recently added a history of the Unit Rig company, and the leading-edge technology they used for their diesel-electric mining trucks. Called The Unit Rig Story, this history came from Jerry Shelton, the retired Vice President of Sales. His insight has never been captured in readily available sources, but at least a Google search for Unit Rig finds his history on the UtahRails.net web site.

The greatest impediment to my own research is the cost of the research itself, i.e., time to travel, travel expenses to get to a repository or archive, and lodging once I get there. So when someone is preparing a history of AOL, I'll guarantee that they will use the BusinessWeek version since it would be readily available from a researcher's remote location, such as a local library, if for no other reason than time and money, and if you have the money, you have the time. But the time needed to ferret out obscure bits of information, such as Marc Seriff's personal history of America On-Line, would be almost non-existent, since any researcher cannot know all of the participants' names until the basic research in readily available sources is completed.

I'm not trying to defend bad research; Lord knows there is plenty of that. But I am trying to put the limitations of research into context. It would be great if today's internet search engines could find all the bits of information needed to tell a story, but they are woefully inadequate. (Try finding the history of ordinary plywood.) The whole concept that all information known to man will one day be on the internet is baloney. The value of newspaper and trade magazine research cannot be overstated, but the cost of putting all published newspapers and magazines on the web would be astronomically expensive. It simply will not happen.

Keeping Busy

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on September 25, 2011)

Technology rules our lives, and UtahRails is no different. In mid-August, new computer hardware came into our world, including Windows 7, and time has been needed to embrace the improvements and develop alternate work flows.

It is gratifying to see the phenomenal response to the newly released Bingham Canyon Railroads book. Sales at Amazon are apparently quite brisk, at least for a railroad history book. There are a couple local book-signing events scheduled. One is on October 1st at 2 pm at the Barnes & Noble in Bountiful, and a second is at 6 pm on October 8th at the Barnes & Noble in Layton.

As for the web site, there have been numerous, but small updates and error-corrections, on several different subjects. Interested persons continue to share new information, and this has also been incorporated.

In addition to adding literally hundreds of newspaper items to the Bingham Canyon information, there has been progress in the realm of Union Pacific steam locomotives and passenger cars. Small tweaks and tidbits, to be sure, but each one adds to the overall history.

Under the heading of “Coming Soon,” is a whole new world of video. I now have the capability to add video to the web site, so work is needed to develop the best method to do so. There is a lot to learn, but learning is always fun.

About History

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on December 29, 2011)

I have to agree with Roger Eyrich, when he wrote:

Research

(May 11, 2012)

A fellow Union Pacific equipment researcher wrote, "Not too far off from my fantasy. Unfortunately, the 2500 page doesn't show whole histories."

I responded: Your fantasy. Too true. I have many such fantasies myself. That's what a scholar is, someone who has wasted hours and hours looking at seemingly pointless records, which suddenly begin to make sense. Patterns begin to form from unrelated information, and soon, things start to become connected. Research is going down alleys to see which ones are blind.

Bingham Lecture

(First published to the UtahRails.net blog on Wordpress on January 22, 2013)

Since the last post about the Lake Park Resort in early October 2012, the remainder of October was spent preparing for an opportunity to be a guest lecturer at University of Utah's College of Mines and Earth Sciences. I was asked to present a history of Utah railroads, and the part they played in the history of mining in Utah. As I prepared for the one-hour lecture, I realized that a bit more research was needed to fill in some of the minor bits to make the verbal story more complete. The result is that numerous updates have been added to the Bingham Canyon pages, and the Utah coal pages. A recent addition of several years' worth of newspaper clippings (a stack of paper about six inches high) has brought the story well into the Rio Tinto era.

The presentation was on November 7th, so that first week of November was also spent adding the final bits. The actual class lecture was in a large conference theatre and I used a 72-page Powerpoint presentation. My greatest fear was that I would commit the dreaded sin of "Death By Powerpoint" by trying to cover too much material in such a short period of time. Sad to say, I saw a few too many yawns. I suspect that although I was able to at least touch on several parts of the story of Utah railroads and the part they played in the success of mining in Utah, the presentation was a bit long in the tooth. I've been invited back to do it again next year as part of the same class, and will make an effort to shorten the time used.

Yahoo NEO

I wrote on September 8, 2013.

As part of a discussion concerning the changes Yahoo made to the user interface in its Yahoo Groups discussion service, under the name of NEO.

The change was done for reasons that are Yahoo's alone. In their words, the intent is to improve the user experience, and existing users may not be their intended audience.

Yahoo is simply following user stats, showing that the users they care about, i.e., can advertise to, all use tablets and smart phones. They don't care about usability from a desktop. A user from a tablet or smart phone has no need to save photos; looky-loo til the cows come home, but no saving.

This was recently posted to one of the forums at Slashdot.

And besides, what do you expect for free?

The one travesty is that we might lose all the Q&A that is part of Yahoo Groups, and great info shared in the archives since this D&RGW group was formed in 1998, 15 years ago. Here we are 72,600+ messages later, and the world is changing around us.

By the way, you can still search the archives. Up where is says "Search Conversations" at the top of the page. Enter your query, such as Tunnel Motor, and click on "Search Groups". It will actually only search this group. It works pretty good.

Myself, I'm okay with the new format; change is the only constant, but adapting to change can be a challenge at times. Adapt and move on.

Kip Farrington Books

I wrote on June 12, 2014, about the books written by S. Kip Farrington.

(Read more about the railroad books written by S. Kip Farrington)

Storing Slides

Posted to Trainorders.com, August 17, 2014

When I started shooting and storing slides in 1972, I used Logan slide file boxes. These were all-metal and held 600 slides, divided into 30 sections of 20 slides each. My friends and I all bought our Logan slide files at our local K-Mart. I had tried Kodak carousels, but they were too limiting and too expensive. My friends and I held regular slide shows for each other, and we all decided to buy Kodak stack loaders that allowed us to show groups of 20 slides. Life was good for at least 15 years, from the early 1970s through the late 1980s. Then the Logan boxes started to get hard to find, as well as getting more expensive.

I had really slowed down my picture taking in the mid 1980s, so the lack of Logan boxes was not a problem. I started traveling in 1989 as part of my work and was able to shoot railroad photos all over the West. I needed more storage and started looking around for a way to store slides, but in something portable to take to slide shows. At my local Ace Hardware store I found a great little clear plastic divided box meant for small parts storage. The price was only $5.99 each, much less that a Logan metal slide file. The Ace parts storage box was 11" long x 6-1/2 inches deep x 2-1/4 inches high. Divided into 15 sections that each held 20-24 slides perfectly. My friends and I began buying these storage boxes from Ace.

Soon Ace stopped carrying the box, but after some phone calls, I found that they were manufactured by Akro-Mills as their 05-505 Utility Box. I stumbled on some Akro-Mills boxes in a local hardware store, up on the top shelf, and bought all six that they had. But by 2014 I hadn't needed any new boxes for quite some time, since I had started selling my collections, and started giving away the extra boxes, both Logans and the extra plastic boxes.

I've seen similar parts boxes in a lot of stores (Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Target, etc.), and always recalled how nice a solution they were for storing slides. These were such a nice solution that I can easily continue to recommend using the concept of a clear plastic box that divides into slide-sized compartments. Look around, measure the compartment size, you may find something that fits your needs.

Finding Failure

(December 22, 2014)

A friend wrote many years ago that doing research is the process of going down alleys to see which ones are blind. Every time I get stumped in my own research I think of what he said, and turn it around, "Now we know what it isn't." One of my life philosophies is that there are no failures, there is only finding out what doesn't work.

What History Is

(March 28, 2015)

A fellow historian wrote: "History isn't just random people appearing and disappearing. History is relationships between individuals and groups, and groups and other groups. One of the challenges for a historian is that nearly all this relationship information is not written down, because it's known by the participants and absolutely opaque to the outsider. Few academic historians understand that these relationships even exist, because (1) they never worked in a field that has life-long loyalty of career and industry, and (2) the subjects of their inquiry are rarely completely human to them. Academic history is a bit zoological when it comes to people. One of the few historians I know of railroads that has reached an understanding of this was Walter Licht, in "Working for the Railroad." Licht totally understood that railroading was all about relationships of family, place, career, railroad, industry."

Research Quotes

(August 23, 2015)

"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." -- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011), quoting fictional French historian Patrick Lagrange.

"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." -- Marston Bates, The Nature Of Natural History (1950)

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many its research." -- Wilson Mizner, 1876-1933

"It is plagiarism when you take something out of a book and use it as your own. If you take it out of several books then it is research." -- Ralph Foss, the director of sales at the McGraw-Hill publishing company, in a talk given at an annual conference for librarians in 1932.

Locomotive Rosters

(September 3, 2015)

Someone wrote on the September 3, 2015: "It's actually a spreadsheet but it will do what I need it to do and it can be searchable. The data can be placed in any order for each column."

And you don't even need to buy MS Office. You can download LibreOffice at no charge (as in free, no cost, zip, nada), and join the millions of other users worldwide (120 million at last count in May). Keep in mind that MS Office is only available in select countries (US, Europe, Australia, and other "developed" countries). What do you think all the other millions of computer users use? Don't be swayed by the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) spread by the advertisers in the U. S., and so-called independent reviewers. LibreOffice is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice

A modern spreadsheet will do whatever us locomotive geeks need to manage our data. And there is plenty of online help in the LibreOffice communities. And because LibreOffice and MS Office are remarkably, amazingly similar (LibreOffice reads and saves MS file formats), you can get spreadsheet help in the MS Office communities as well. A modern spreadsheet is very powerful.

Filemaker is/was Apple "our way is the best way, and it's cool". To get Filemaker data into either a LibreOffice Base (their database), or LibreOffice Calc (their spreadsheet), you will have to export the Filemaker data to CSV (comma separated value), or some other delimited format. Hard lessons abound, and FileMaker has been through too many upgrades that don't read anything older than five years. If your data files is older than five years, it is not accessible and you are screwed.

Better yet, make your data future proof and convert it to a delimited text file, and keep it there. It is still fully searchable in any text editor. If you need to manipulate it, like find all EMC products in 1939, etc., load the delimited file into a spreadsheet, do whatever you need to do, then dump it. You still have your text file. My own choice is a word processor like MS Word, or LibreOffice Text.

LibreOffice started out as OpenOffice, and branched off in 2010 when IBM abandoned its support in the form of providing a home for the community on its servers. OpenOffice had started out as an anti-Microsoft, open source project in Germany in 1985, and was purchased by Sun in 1999. Then Oracle bought Sun in 2010, and took away resources and set OpenOffice on the back burner. In 2011, Oracle donated OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation (Apache web server is open source and runs 90 percent of the web servers worldwide). But OpenOffice stalled as Apache struggled to get its arms around the package. Oracle donated OpenOffice to Apache in June 2011 and the first updates came out a year later. OpenOffice.org is now Apache OpenOffice. The OpenOffice document format (ODF) was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006.

The backers of LibreOffice were the original group from OpenOffice, who did not want to be under Oracle's thumb. They continued LibreOffice development, and now it is out ahead of OpenOffice in security, bug fixes, usability and users.

Everything I Have

(September 22, 2015)

A recent question asked, "I am trying to model UP's Heritage train and I am looking for as much info as I can get my hands on regarding the UP Power Car UP 2066. What I am looking for are technical drawings if they can be found, of the car post remodel in 2004. I was wondering if this information was available to the public or if you know where I can obtain more information."

I responded, "I have never seen any drawings or diagrams of UPP 2066, either before or after the rebuild in 2004. I doubt that such a thing exists, since UP does not do diagrams any longer, especially for cars with only one example. You will have to figure it out from photos."

Yet another guy who wants everything I have. He's "gathering" to maybe build a model. It has been my experience that most information requests are exactly the same: they are thinking of maybe building a model, that if they do, no one will ever see, except their three best railroad buddies. Pretty frustrating lately, as if I have this vast archive of hoarded and as-yet untapped information. I'm fast losing my desire to help.

Ogden Union Station and UTA Frontrunner

Posted to Facebook, June 9, 2016

Concerning Ogden, I had a friend who was with the Frontrunner construction consortium. In their planning meetings with UTA and Ogden City back in 2004-2005, as part of the Frontrunner service to Ogden, UTA offered to spend more than a few of its federal dollars to upgrade Ogden Union Station, and improve the facilities in relation to the city. Ogden City would have none of it. UTA said, "Are you sure? Won't cost you much at all; we will pay for about 90 percent." The answer was still, "No, we don't have money for all this old-timey stuff." That's why Frontrunner ends where it does today. The blame falls entirely with the leaders of Ogden City. Kind of makes the situation today, with the museum, more understandable. I think Ogden City simply wants all the train stuff to simply go away, and they are doing their best to make it so.

Swapping Photos

I wrote on November 4, 2016.

When I first began receiving and scanning the photos of Union Pacific steam locomotives, in what I generically call the DDR Collection (for Dave, Dean, and Ralph), I was very concerned about ownership and copyrights. After much research and numerous email exchanges, I learned that during the 1950s and early 1960s there was a group of photographers who all swapped negatives like trading cards. It was the end of steam, and they were focused on documenting those events.

(View the DDR Collection; 1068 photos)

The names you see credited in the collection, such as Stan Kistler, Dick Kindig, Harold Vollrath, Don Roberts, Robert Foster, and a few others, simply means that they had one of many negatives taken at the time, and traded within a circle of good railroad photographer friends. Some times, as they visited each other, they took near duplicate views because they were standing side-by-side. Don Roberts was one of them, and he took lots of his own photos, as well as trading many extra negatives from others. When he passed away, his large collection was "divided among friends," but no one really knows what happened to his collection. All of these "traders" were seeking photos of locomotives they themselves could not see, and exposed extras of their own photos to share in as wide distribution as possible.

A large part of the DDR collection comes from Dave England, who is now 84 [in 2016]. He lives here in the Salt Lake City area, and he bought hundreds of prints from all the guys advertising in Trains magazine in the 1955-1959 time period, all at 15 cents each. He and his new wife moved into their new home in 1959, and his railroad hobby took a back seat to everything else for several years as they raised their family. I've known Dave England since 1968 when I was in high school. One day back in December 2009, he showed up on my door step with a couple beat up old lunch sacks stuffed full of black and white prints. "Here, you want these?" Sure! He went on to tell me that he found them in the trunk of an old car he has had in storage, and had completely forgotten about them. In 2015, he mentioned he had several photos albums of UP steam locomotives, and asked if I would I like to see them.

The other 'D' in the DDR is Dean Gray, who passed away a year ago, and whose collection passed to his good friend Ralph Gochnour (the 'R' in DDR). Ralph had owned the Utah Pacific detail parts company until he sold the molds and masters to Tomar about 15 years ago. Ralph and Dean were good friends with Jack Pfeifer, and had a large collection of Jack's prints, made from negatives (his and others) from his negative trading days in the 1950s. At about the same time that he did his "West From Omaha" all-color book in 1990, Jack made several sets of 5x7 prints from negatives in his collection, and sold the sets of prints. Dean and Ralph received the test prints. Jack then donated his negatives and his slides to the Denver Public Library, but due to budget contraints, the collection is not available for viewing either in person, or online. When I started scanning Dave England's collection, both Dean and Ralph shared their collections of black and white prints of photos of UP steam locomotives; some from Jack Pfeifer, and many, many others they themselves had collected from a variety of sources.

While I call it the DDR collection, others have called it the EGG collection, for England, Gray and Gochnour.

Bingham Mills Back Story

(November 17, 2016)

Researching the mills at Bingham...

A recent group of photos on the Bingham Canyon History Facebook group showed one of the wrecks of the Copper Belt railroad. I was able to do some research to determine the dates of the photos, including the dates of the wrecks themselves. Two of the wrecks literally destroyed the Wall concentrator mill in Bingham canyon due to that building's close proximity down-slope from the Copper Belt tracks.

(Read more about the Copper Belt wrecks)

This set off a binge of research to find some history of the Wall mill, along with more research about the other concentrating mills in Bingham, to determine the Wall mill's place in the history of ore processing and railroads in Bingham. There were several mills whose names show up regularly as being closely associated with railroads in Bingham, such as the Winnamuck mill, the Rogers mill, the Markham mill, and lastly, the Lead mill. This last mill was also associated with a station on the Rio Grande known as "Lead Mine" at the mouth of Bingham Canyon. More research found some good history of the Lead mine and mill, and the four-mile tramway that connected them along the east slope of the Oquirrh mountains. The Lead mine was one of the earliest and most important mines in the history of Bingham Canyon, and one of the most successful in the period between the mid 1870s and the mid 1890s.

(Read more about the mills at Bingham)

(Read more about the Lead mine and mill)

As the mines on the east slope (located at the top of Copper Gulch, Lead Gulch, and Yosemite Gulch) grew in production of lead and silver, with small amounts of gold, they were soon consolidated as the Dalton & Lark company, including the Lead mine and mill, and tramway. In 1895, the Dalton & Lark company began work on a drain and transportation tunnel, with its opening down on the foothills of the east slope at the base of Copper Gulch, the site of today's Lark.

In 1900, the Dalton & Lark group was sold to a new company that took the Mascotte name to separate itself from the small portion of the Dalton & Lark group that remained with the original owners. Work on the drain tunnel continued, under the name of the new Mascotte company, and was completed in 1904, draining the former Dalton & Lark properties and connecting with the main Dalton & Lark incline working shaft.

(Read more about the Dalton & Lark mine)

(Read more about the Mascotte tunnel)

The Dalton & Lark story includes the story of when the United States Mining company moved its facilities in Bingham from the Niagara tunnel out to Lark. This in turn brought still more research about the history of the Niagara tunnel.

(Read more about the United States Mining company)

(Read more about the Niagara tunnel)

It's all connected. I have yet to find any event in history that happened all by itself and had no effect on something else. The story these new pages tell is all connected, and make the story of Bingham canyon, its mines and its railroads all the more fascinating.

Utah, Crossroads of the West

I have been asked how far back that phrase goes. With the understanding that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I did some newspaper research...

The earliest reference to Ogden being the crossroads of the west is in the July 28, 1921 issue of the Ogden Standard Examiner. "Ogden is the place which should be made the center of railway mail activity in all this region, as this is at the cross-roads of the west..."

Then in the October 14, 1923, the Ogden Standard Examiner wrote, "The very strategic position which Ogden occupies at the cross-roads of the West should lead, with the aid of surrounding territory such as Cache Valley to a great enlargement of the importance of Ogden in western trade and commerce."

Then Salt Lake City stole the phrase to promote its new aeroport. The earliest reference in online newspapers about Salt Lake City as the crossroads of the west was in the July 1, 1928, issue of the Salt Lake Telegram, in an article about new airline routes, calling Salt Lake City the aerial crossroads of the west.

The September 2, 1929, issue of the Salt Lake Telegram refers to Salt Lake City as the air crossroads of the west.

The April 1, 1931, issue of the Salt Lake Telegram had an editorial titled "Blowing Our Horn" saying that "Salt Lake City and Utah stand at the crossroads of the west in the very center of Scenic America. On railroads and highways its strategic location is second to none. The major portion of the tourists who come into the west pass through the city and state."

In this statement ("the major portion"), I suspect Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads along the northern tier would likely disagree, as would the marketing folks at the Santa Fe railroad, and the Southern Pacific railroad along the southern tier.

In the November 2, 1934, issue of the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah's Governor Blood declared "Utah is the crossroads of the west."

With that announcement in his speech calling for the establishment of a government "air defense station" in Salt Lake City, and the stationing of a unit of the Army Air Corps in Salt Lake City, Governor Blood created the phrase of "Utah, Crossroads of the West."

GP9 Grilles

(June 10, 2016)

Over 35 years ago, back when I was working for a living in UP's Salt Lake City shop, I was called over to a GP9 where a mechanic and his supervisor were scratching their heads about the unit running hot. The mechanic was a newbie, but wanting to prove himself, he was convinced that the shutters were sticking, and wanted the "chicken wire" grille removed so he could get them unstuck. I tried to show him the access panels underneath the radiators, that gave pretty good access to the back of the shutters, but he wanted the grilles off. And his boss, also a newbie, agreed. So I spent the entire shift trying to get all the attaching screws out, with way too many of them simply breaking off.

The guys on the next shift finished, and the next day I came in and found the grille laying on the ramp. The shutters were untouched (still dusty and dirty), and the boss told me to put the grille back on. It seems that early in the next shift, both the General Foreman and Shop Superintendent had seen the effort, and literally screamed at the two idiots who decided that the shutters were stuck, to put the damn thing back together and get it out of the shop. They wanted it out of the shop quickly, so rather than drilling out the broke screws, I replaced what I could and welded the unattached part of the grille to the carbody. I found out how sturdy and heavy the grille assembly was, trying to hold it in place. More than 35 years later, I don't recall the unit number, but over the next couple years I would see the unit, with burned paint around the welds, and cringe at what was done. I've often wondered if the unit was one those that donated their radiator shutters and grilles to the SW10 program, and what the guys in Omaha thought when they removed the welded-on grille to use it as part of the SW10 program.

Missing Documentation

(December 19, 2016)

Railroading today has less and less respect for keeping proper documentation of their fixed plant and rolling stock. It's just all become a sloppy, careless, unhappy mess.

I have heard this from many of historians, and from "interested observers" both inside and outside of the industry. Without the ICC watch dog looking over their shoulders after 1995, the whole railroad documentation effort went out the window. Yes, not doing the government mandated documentation saved them money by getting rid of all those clerks and accountants, but the real cost is that they lost a big-picture view and understanding of their property. Everyone in management assumes that someone else has the big picture, where anyone with more than six months experience is a "subject matter expert." It seems like all corporations today run themselves like the local four-person pizza parlor, without any asset management or accountability. I'm not a very political person, but when you look through the lens of history, the changes in American business during the 1990s were remarkable in the extreme pro-business stance in both executive and legislative branches.

I put the blame for this loss of documentation to a loss of appreciation and respect for institutions and integrity. I know I sound like a grumpy old man, but, I don't think I am wrong in my dismay that this has occurred. In the United States of my youth, in the 1970s, people took their jobs and their responsibilities much more seriously. Now it's all devolved into a grimy scramble for loot and power. You don't see hardly anyone -- whether rich and powerful or poor and meek -- spending much time worrying about or upholding old ideals of community, togetherness, or public and social responsibility. Railroad documentation today is crap because no one cares anymore, whereas 50 years ago, ICC or no ICC, people at railroads took their jobs much more seriously.

Worshiping The Quarterback

(December 19, 2016)

A fellow historian wrote -- "There's a lot of gushing hagiography around Palmer, Dodge, Moffat, etc., but the reality is they were sharp-elbowed businessmen with sharp practices that leveraged the gullibility, avarice, and lack of power of others, enabled greatly by the power vacuum that was the frontier of both the West and industrialization, to make a killing. I'm pretty sure they were mostly interested in making money, with a "railroad" solely as the means to that end. That we got a transportation system out of the deal was due entirely to others who followed after they exacted their tribute and moved on, others whose only means to earn a living was to make something out of the craptastic infrastructure that Palmer, Dodge, and Moffat threw onto the landscape. The people who are not recognized in the literature are the armies of ordinary railroaders, both agreement and management, that took railroading seriously and built the property into a credible transportation service. We're all about the quarterback hero. Not the damn linemen that keep him from being pasted."

(Hagiography is a noun that means biography of saints or venerated persons, or an idealizing or idolizing biography.)

I wrote in response -- "hagiography" I love that word. There has always been, and always will be plenty of hero worship. Corporate. Government. Religion. Watching the news today and the silliness of sore losers is yet another example. But having read newspapers from as far back as the 1870s, there has always been plenty of hero worship, mostly in the media. In the Bingham copper mines, it was always about D. C. Jackling, when in fact open pit mining was not new, and he certainly did not make it work all by himself. He hated that Stephen Birch's name was always ahead of his, since Birch started Kennecott up in Alaska and made so much money up there for the Guggenheims. Birch always had a close place with the Guggenheims, having grown up with the two sons. No matter how much Jackling was the local corporate hero in Utah, at the New York end, Birch always got more credit, until Birch died in 1936. When Birch died, the Guggenheim brothers lost interest in the day-to-day stuff, and consolidated all of their holdings under the Kennecott name, and sat back and watched the money roll in. Of course, that twisted Jackling the wrong way, yet again, to see his beloved Utah Copper Company simply disappear. He was 73 when he finally retired in 1942, under pressure from the government to get control of copper prices and copper production for the war effort.

6000 Horsepower

(September 28, 2017)

A very large portion of my research about UP diesels was done during a three-day stay in Omaha in May 1978, at the invite of Frank Acord. He turned me loose at the microfilm machine on the 9th floor of the UP headquarters building. The clerk who guided my initial use of the machine remarked about it being extremely unusual, letting an outsider have access to the microfilms of what were internal Mechanical Department correspondence. I spent many hours sitting at the microfilm reader, keeping in mind the admonition not to print too many images due to their high cost. I took a lot of notes.

In May 1995, I spent another three days in Omaha doing research for my Ogden Rails book. This was in the basement of the Westco building, where UP had all their records, including their AFE records. I was all by myself for all three days, spending 12-13 hours each day. I had a key to the building, but never left, not even to eat lunch. I was using grant money from a local foundation that funded the Ogden project, but while doing Ogden research, I also took the opportunity of doing some UP caboose research as well. I also opened several drawers that were obviously about UP's diesel locomotive fleet and discovered several bits of wonder, including the AFE file for UP's planned purchase of Baldwin Centipedes. Looking back on the time, I apparently was so engrossed in looking at the 1940s and early 1950s (they were filed chronologically), that I never got into the files for the turbocharging era, and 8500 GTEL era of the mid 1950s.

Some researchers have wondered why UP never showed any interest in the diesel-hydraulic locomotives like those delivered to SP during this period in the early and mid 1960s, when SP was receiving their Kraus-Maffei locomotives in 1961 and 1964. By this time UP was pretty deeply involved in working with EMD to push its 567 diesel engine to its limits. They kept GE and ALCO on the hook to encourage competition.

This was the Double-Diesel era on UP. It was a combination of D. S. Neuhart's desire for improving locomotive technology, and Harold Rees as his chief design engineer. Then Rees retired in 1964, and Frank St. Lucas and Lloyd Edson took over his efforts. At about the same time, GM started work on their 645 engine, having pushed the 567 to its limits, i.e. the turbocharged D-block engine used in the DD35s and GP35. UP saw the potential of a high-horsepower 645 engine, and was among the first to buy EMD's SD45. I recall seeing a sketch in Lloyd Edson's home in 1978 for a double-engine version; a monster at 7200 HP. But it was way too long and way too heavy. The old-head mechanical guys were retiring in the late 1960s, and the younger electrical guys were working on electrical solutions for a better locomotive. The result was that UP pushed EMD into Dash 2 technology, with the DDA40X locomotives as the test bed. Neuhart and UP were so confident in their guys' work that they bought a large fleet of these experimental units, instead of just one, two or three test locomotives. As they say, the rest is history...

This brings to mind that I have found history, any history including locomotive history, to be the story of the people doing the work, as much as the story of the technology. On UP, it was Otto Jabelmann that brought us the Challengers, Big Boys and 800s in the late 1930s and early 1940s. UP's president was William Jeffers, an old-head steam guy, and he held UP to its steam locomotives until his mandatory retirement in 1946. When George Ashby took his place as president, he took the path, any path, that Jeffers would never have taken. Hence UP's massive multi-million dollar order for diesel locomotives in 1946-1947. D. S. Neuhart took control of UP's mechanical department in 1949 and UP started its turbine era. Neuhart pulled Harold Rees into his office to design the ideal UP locomotive. While they pursued their designs for the super locomotive, they continued to buy multiple-unit sets from EMD and Alco to get their ideal 6000HP locomotive, matching the power of a Big Boy.

This 6000-horsepower number keeps popping up in all the correspondence, with the pinnacle being the 6600HP DDA40X of 1969. Then in 1971, Neuhart retired and his replacement, Frank Acord, was told to only buy what was was available from the builders, and that UP was no longer in the business of designing locomotives. This was the dawn of the SD40-2, the most successful locomotive in all of railroad history. And UP's fingerprints are all over the SD40-2, based on what was originally part of the DDA40X centennials. In 1980, just before the UP-MP-WP merger, UP was going to buy another large fleet of SD40-2s, with some improvements. The longest-lasting feature of this planned order was what has become known as the heavy-block 645, a UP improvement to strengthen the engine. SD40-2s, with heavy-block 645 engines, are in high demand even today, 30 years after they were built.

Rights Management

(February 21, 2019)

The current focus on rights management by publishers at all levels has certainly quashed uncounted projects, which would have a narrow subject and a narrow audience, with little interest to the general public. This includes materials preserved by state and local archive organizations, which are turning down donations of historical items and materials, and limiting access to existing materials for fear of rights management issues. It is a simple case of the classic fable about the dog in the manger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dog_in_the_Manger

By preventing the release of historical projects, the assembled multitude of rights management fear mongers are forcing an ever-growing lack of an understanding of history, dooming society to forever relearning our mistakes and successes.

(Read more about copyright and rights management.)

Archives Copyright

(2019)

I shake my head in wonder at what the Union Pacific Historical Society has placed in Laramie, that no one will likely see. Especially now that none of these archives will simply let anyone go through these types of materials as an entire group. It is one item at a time, but only after the collection is "processed" and indexed, which requires resources that most archives do not have. So the collection waits to be processed, and in the mean time, no one can see any of it.

And now, with these institutions' massive fear copyright infringement, they no longer digitize (and make available to the public) anything that does not have a specific copyright release, for each and every single item. Did you know that anything marked as being created by a corporation, such as a railroad, is now considered to be copyrighted and restricted to on-site use only, unless it was created for public use. Examples would be a railroad's public timetable, which is okay to digitize and make available, compared to an employee timetable, which is not. I learned this when I donated all my railroad drawings to the University of Utah Special Collections. On-site use only, but since I included the digital scans I made, they would allow digital viewing, on-site. At least it was better than simply throwing them in a dumpster, but not by much.

As long as individuals do it, and share it on their personal web site (or rented server service, such as SmugMug, or DropBox, etc.), there isn't much any person or company can or will do about it. It falls under the fair use clause, which includes educational and/or reference use. But the advice is to allow direct download only, not have an intermediate step of buying a digital file. I allow "right-click save" of the original digital file. Some people don't. Whatever I offer as 'Don Strack' is okay, but offering its as 'UtahRails' may raise questions.

Another Book

(September 11, 2020)

Sorry. I have no interest in supporting another book that no one buys, or even reads. Of course the publisher is interested, since he sees the world through the lens of publishing to paper. I completely disagree. Limited distribution of railroad information through books and magazines are likely the sole reason for the railroad hobby dying off. It's a Catch 22 situation: increasing costs of paper and printing, and advertising, along with hobby shops closing left and right, results in limited distribution, which results in a shrinking market, which in-turn results in limited distribution, which in-turn results in a shrinking market, etc, etc. People in their 20s, 30s and 40s don't buy books and magazines.

I have chosen distribution by digital means as my path to support the reduced numbers of railroad hobbyists. Granted, there isn't anyone making money, but I have never been one who sees my hobby as a potential revenue stream. All of my experience with editors and publishers is that they see the world solely in terms of money. I decided about ten years ago to step off the merry-go-round and seek my own path with my UtahRails.net web site (it has never been UtahRails.com).

I would be glad to host digital copies of all your articles. You have done an amazing amount of work, and it deserves to be readily available by way of the internet. Instead of being lost to history in a maze of back issues of magazines that saw limited distribution in the first place. You are the author, and you own the copyright, no matter of where it was published. The original publisher has no say in whether or not you make your work available digitally. It is your decision.

Real History

(May 15, 2022)

Back on October 21, 2015, I was asked by a young university history major, "What issues are controversial surrounding the golden spike? As I have read up so far, these include Chinese workers for the Central Pacific, Brigham Young and the Mormons in building the railroad, Native groups, and the argument of the early railroads' government dependence and railroad Barron abuses (as you discussed in the KUED Promontory interview)."

I responded... I completely disagree with the focused study of the social and cultural changes driven by historical events. That is why I focus on what I call "real history," instead of the touchy-feely crap that passes for history these days. Real history is the study of events and the larger-than-life personalities that drive the events, not the lower social-economic classes that were simply paid to do the work. The so-called robber barons were not evil people, just greedy, and they took advantage of the laws and political climate of their age.

Brigham Young was as much of a "baron" as the Wall Street guys. He just had different motives. I don't defend them, but studying them gives insight about what is happening today; greedy people taking advantage of every loop hole. There are similar "barons" solidly in place today. Same circus; different clowns.

A follow-on question, "Has any argued that the golden spike was not as important as we make it out to be? It was obviously important to link the nation and so on. What are your thoughts?"

I responded... The driving of the golden spike was a media event. Brigham Young did not attend because he already had his railroad connection to the East two months before when Union Pacific came to Ogden. There was nothing to the west that he cared about. The railroad connection east from California, and across the wasteland of Nevada was more of an economic need for California, and a political one to keep California as part of the United States. Shipping to the east by way of sailing ships took too long, and was unreliable. Even then, the railroad connection proved to be too expensive, so the need for the Panama Canal soon grew in importance. The canal was more for the benefit of West Coast manufacturers and raw materials. By the late 1890s, California was becoming an economic powerhouse, and Teddy Roosevelt needed their votes. Real history, not the fluff they teach us in middle school and high school. No wonder everyone yawns at the mention of history.

It's all tied together. Nothing, no event in history, happens in a vacuum. And money, and making more of it, usually drives everything. It's the men who control the money who drive events. For the past 150 years in America, its been white men. But that is slowly changing to include Asians, Latinos, and women. Very slowly. That's why we hear so many cautionary tones about China and Asia, and even India. Cautionary notes from old white men and their wannabe minions.

My advice to the young man was to keep reading. Become a good historian. If you aren't chasing money, and have thick skin, become a good history professor. I know a couple guys who started down the path of professional historian, but academia drove them off. There are several others who also appreciate and understand real history, and they too, did not take the academic path. Whatever you end up doing, make an effort to appreciate real history and how it affects our lives today. You will be a better person for it.

One of my favorite cliches is, "How can we possibly know where we are going, unless we turn around and look at where we have been."

As part of the later discussion, a "trained" academic historian who was also a railfan, took issue with three or five words of my brief summary of why Brigham Young was not at Promontory, and my advice to focus on what really happened and the motivations of any event. I am not surprised. It is easy to cherry-pick a broad statement, and focus on the faults of one easy-to-understand statement. I worked for 10 years for a railroad, in a unionized shop craft. I don't revere the corporations, nor do I want to diminish those who work for a living.

As a historian, I tend to focus on dates and names -- as one historian put it, the skeleton of history. Get the names and dates right, and the rest will fall into place. Analysis has never been one of my strong points, because whatever is said, someone will pick it apart to support their life viewpoint. Our modern world would simply not be what it is today without those who work to keep it running. And I believe that the corporate bosses, and their forever pursuit of shareholder value has truly ruined America, and large parts of world as a whole.

We cannot judge the past by comparing it with our current values. But studying what the railroads and mining companies, and their workers, have done shines a light on their motivations, which in-turn helps us better understand who we can be today. As I said, how can we know where we are going if we don't look back to where we have been.

Answering Questions

(February 4, 2023)

In a recent discussion about the radio antenna platform on UP's RCS SD45s, and after someone shared a link to my web page about UP's SD45s, with information about modeling the radio antenna platform, the person asking the question wrote, "I have NO idea if and when I'll get to this."

I have spent too many hours doing research to answer a question, only to have a final reply similar to the above. "I was thinking about planning to maybe build this model."

I do UtahRails to satisfy my curiosity, and the joy of finding out what happened. I just don't like finding out how people use the information. Several times I have found that they want to build accurate models that will reside in their basement and only they and their four or five friends will ever see. Another example was about three years ago I helped a guy, and asked him to share a photo of the finished model. His reply, "Nobody sees my work."

I know. It's a silly rant, but if you wonder why I don't respond to questions, that is why.

Strawberry Ridge

(August 2023)

Someone wrote that Strawberry Ridge, between the Unita Basin and Heber, was the top of a horseshoe that faced east. It was the obstacle for Moffat's Denver & Salt Lake's entrance to the west side of the Wasatch.

In the early 1920s, with the political success that created the Moffat Tunnel for both trains and Denver's water supply, there was a similar proposal for a combined rail/water Strawberry Tunnel for the trains of Simon Bamberger's Salt Lake & Denver ("The Unita Basin Route"), and to move Green River/Colorado River water from the Unita Basin, and under the Strawberry Ridge, to the Wasatch Front. This was in response to the recently signed Colorado River Compact of 1922. The tunnel, with its east portal near today's Strawberry Reservoir, would have exited on the west side into the head of Diamond Fork Creek, then into the Spanish Fork River and into Utah Lake, bringing Colorado River water into the the rapidly growing Utah and Salt Lake valleys.

There wasn't the political will in Utah or Washington DC for the combined rail and water tunnel in Utah, but the water portion would later be built as part of the much larger Central Utah Project, with the planning and politics beginning in 1928-1929. The actual tunnel, to replace the original pioneering and much smaller Strawberry Tunnel of the 1900-1910 era for irrigation purposes, wasn't started until the late 1960s and was completed in 1998.

(Read more about the Diamond Fork System, U. S. Department of the Interior)

Utah Railway and USSR&M

(October 24, 2023)

A case can easily be made against Utah Railway being able to stay in business had they built their own railroad. They needed the trackage rights agreement with D&RG to become an extension of the mine tracks of U. S. Fuel's own coal mines. But I think that was the point, to give United States Smelting Refining & Mining (USSR&M) more control over the transportation of coal from its own mines, to its own smelter. I don't know enough about how coal was used in metallic smelting, thus understanding why controlling its own coke supply wasn't important to USSR&M.

I don't have access to Utah Copper annual reports, but I vaguely recall some statements (maybe in the 1920 period, when B&G was removed as a common carrier) that the company never intended the Bingham & Garfield to make money. They were surprised that they made so much money as a common carrier, carrying ore for the other mines, especially USSR&M. But when the ICC decided every common carrier was to contribute 6 percent of profits to the sinking fund for poor carriers, Utah Copper said, Nope, and made the B&G its own private railroad. Utah Copper wanted to control more of its vertical integration from mine to finished copper, or at least to whatever they sent to the smelter. Maybe USSR&M had the same thinking for Utah Railway, since they had little traffic other than from their own coal mines.

The above comment made me realize that the big change for USS&RM in Bingham came in 1914, when they shut down their aerial tramway, and began using the Niagara tunnel in Copperfield in upper Bingham canyon as a haulage tunnel, with Utah Copper and B&G furnishing transportation to Bingham, then by D&RG to USSR&M's Midvale smelter. USSR&M did not own the Lark facilities until 1929, but after that, their use of the in-canyon Niagara tunnel rapidly diminished, becoming mostly a tunnel for man-trips. After 1920 and the changes to B&G, it was Utah Copper that moved USSR&M ore from the Niagara tunnel down to Bingham for interchange with D&RG/D&RGW. The Lark facilities were owned by Ohio Copper through a series of corporate maneuvers from when the Mascotte tunnel was completed from Ohio Copper ground in Bingham in 1907, out east to Lark. Ohio Copper had its own concentrating mill at Lark. Their own ore wasn't good enough, so they tried to make it a custom mill, but it eventually failed due to competition from Utah Copper and USSR&M.

If nothing else, my exposure to all this history makes me realize even more so, that nothing in railroads or mining happens in a vacuum. One thing will always affect another, possibly unseen without additional research. There is always more research to do.

This narrative makes me appreciate the financing of railroads in the pre-World War I period. It appears that today's Wall Street wizards are merely looking at the same cost and benefit ratio as those guys 110 years ago, but with up-to-date calculators. Today's buzz word is "Total Cost of Ownership." Apparently Harriman and his associates started a new way of looking at business finance in the very late 1890s, that carried through to WW I.

Boycotts

(December 5, 2023)

The wishful thinkers' best tool is the boycott, which the media covers frantically. If anyone watched Elon Musk's full New York Times DealBook interview (after everyone stopped listening when he said the magic F word), he said that boycotts as blackmail don't work. Never have. Never will. But the noise and media attention around them drowns out any discussion. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

Bribery

(December 16, 2023)

Over the past 20 years of doing business history research, covering the period from the 1870s to today, I have read uncountable numbers of newspapers, press releases, internal company reports and court cases. "Bribery" can take many forms. There are many ways of getting a regulator's attention and tacit approval. Almost all of the ways of garnering attention are undocumented and unprovable, but obvious to anyone who takes the time to look. Money actually changing hands is a very small percentage of bribery. The battle to stop oil being shipped by rail through Colorado is a fine example of opponents (NIMBYs) focusing on false dangers, meant to scare inattentive and easily distracted regulators, and other casual observers. I have certainly written my share of "justifications" to get programs approved; I recognize the use of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) when I see it.

GP9 On Cache Local

(April 30, 2024)

April 1968. I was still in high school, and UP was running its last Preston Mixed on its Cache Valley Branch in northern Utah. I was in the local model railroad club and a bunch of us rushed up to Cache Junction and filled the two cabooses on hand for the trip. I took the crew up on their offer for a couple of us to be in the cab of the local's GP9. I was in the left-side seats for part of the trip up to Preston, where we and the crew all went to lunch at the local cafe. I rode one of the cabooses for the return trip back to Cache Junction. To this day, the sights and smells of that GP9 for about three hours are burned-in. The experience of the GP9, and the views from the caboose as the local made drops and pick-ups at various spurs along the branch became the basis for my hobby all through the many years after. Every time I look at one of Emil Albrecht photos at Cache Junction and elsewhere in Cache Valley, the memories come flooding back, and remind me of why I put the effort into preserving his photos.

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