Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill You want to know quantity or place, and what date? WP had rights into both UP North Yard and D&RGW Roper Yard. Most of the interchange went to UP.
QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill Here's what I know: WP never had an independent presence in Salt Lake City, as it was the Pacific Coast extension of the Gould empire, which owned the Rio Grande. Thus it was a tenant in the facilities of the Rio Grande, first in its downtown Salt Lake City yard and engine facility, and later in Roper Yard south of the city when it was built in the 1940s. Rio Grande employees did the servicing and switching, as WP had few of its own employees in Salt Lake City. After the Great Depression, WP and Rio Grande were split from each other and WP started doing what made sense for it, which was give a sizeable percentage of its traffic to the UP, which had better connections and transit times than the Rio Grande. So WP freight trains began running into UP's North Yard as well as Rio Grande's Roper Yard. For an idea of the traffic split, in 1962 the WP delivered to the Rio Grande in Salt Lake City 26,432 carloads and received from Rio Grande 47,895 carloads, and delivered to UP 19,544 carloads and received 19,400 carloads. That's a grand total of 310 carloads a day, rather sad by today's standards, and why the WP could only manage three trains each way on the average day. After it merged with UP that shot up to eight to ten a day each way, but now UP is favoring the SP out of Ogden because it's shorter and doesn't have to claw its way through Salt Lake City, and the WP is, guess what, back to three trains each way a day again. What goes around, comes around. WP and Rio Grande passenger trains used Salt Lake City Union Depot -- UP had its own union depot a couple of blocks away. (Huh, you're saying? Union? Yes -- it dates to when the Oregon Short Line and the Los Angeles & Salt Lake were separate railroads. Until 1921, UP owned only 50% of the LA&SL.) In the CZ era, WP power would run light down to Roper Yard for servicing, and return in time to pick up the next train. The CZ cars ran through, and if anything had to come off for servicing, it would go to Roper Yard. I believe that servicing facilities at Rio Grande's original downtown yard were closed toward the end of the steam era, which is when Roper opened. WP freight power was serviced at whichever yard it ended up at. Like Dave, I have never heard or or seen evidence of a runthrough of D&RGW/WP passenger power. Anything can happen, but the utter lack of evidence is a good sign that if it did, it was rare. Freight power was pooled a couple of times with D&RGW, but not for long. D&RGW didn't like to pool power with anyone; for one, it maintained its power better than almost every other road and figured it would get the short end of the deal, and for two, it was arrogant and thought other roads were inferior. WP began pooling with UP in the 1970s and by 1980, pure WP consists were pretty scarce west of Salt Lake City -- maybe one out of five trains. As for wyeing, you could do that at Grant Tower if the operator would let you, or at Roper Yard or North Yard. Grant Tower was a Rio Grande tower, so a WP request to tie up the plant for 15 minutes to wye power wasn't going to happen unless there wasn't anything else going on.
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