Grassroots Railroad Sports?

"Stored" UP 3900-series Challengers at Cheyenne. The vultures have already nabbed the numberboards and number plates off the #3955 and #3950, as well as the cylinder head covers. These are likely amongst the batches that were parked and freeze-damaged. In the top photo, you can just make out the front of an FEF Northern poking out from behind the second batch of stored Challengers. In the bottom photo, there are active turbines milling about and you can just see the cab of an active Challenger, #3966, at right.

A grungy UP #3966 rolls onto the Cheyenne turntable, running out her last days before retirement. The number on the switcher with the slant-deck tender certainly looks like #4466. #4466 spent most of it's life as a shop switcher and was the UP Cheyenne Shop's last steam shop switcher, andd eventually ended up at the California State Railroad Museum. It was restored to operation in 1984 and ran until 1999, when California emissions regulations essentially banned coal-fired steam locomotives and forced it back into retirement.

UP #3941, also showing wear and tear, heads onto the Cheyenne turntable.

UP Challenger #3992 darkens an already stormy sky as it crosses Sherman Hill with a train of refrigerated boxcars.

A Union Pacific Challenger in passenger service. This was actually not that uncommon, and UP even ordered a batch of Challengers that were painted in the two-tone gray with elephant ear smoke deflectors that were intended for passenger usage. D&RGW was also known to regularly assign their Challengers to passenger trains, and they handled the assignment quite well.

Would any of you guys be interested in some old old railroad lanterns? 

They're just in my way and I don't want to break them, but I don't really have anywhere to display them or do anything with them.

$20 + shipping for both of them. Not sure what size box they'll fit in, but I'll pack them as securely as I can. 

In case I forget to check this thread for a while, shoot me a message. Esseeno (at) gmail

A grungy #3951 working out her final years

In reply to RevRico :

The Dietz Traffic Gard is interesting because it's actually not a railroad lantern, it's for construction crews to place along roadsides. They were made local to me in Syracuse, NY apparently.

I have a similar Dressel lantern, mine has a stamping for New York Central. If nobody else on here wants them, I'll take them. They'd make a neat wall display for the house

Union Pacific Big Boy #4019 doing what it was specifically designed to do: move freight over Sherman Hill quickly and unassisted. Union Pacific was a fan of the "more is better" mentality, and taking the already successful 4-6-6-4 design and adding an extra driver on each engine resulted in a serious powerhouse. The design was originally to be called a Wasatch, but then someone at Alco chalked "Big Boy" on the smomkebox and the name stuck. 

Union Pacific #4003 and #4012 on the Harriman Line over Sherman Hill. They must have been moving some serious tonnage, because the Harriman Line was designed to reduce the ruling grade over Sherman Hill from 1.55% to 0.82%. Construction of the Harriman Line, sometimes referred to as Track Three, began in 1951, with the plan being to speed freight service up and reduce the requirement for helpers. It cost $16 million in 1951 dollars and took one year, adding 9 miles in length but nearly halving the grade. Construction crews threw a fill 112 feet high across Sand Creek, one 157 feet high across Texas Creek, and dug a cut 110 feet deep through solid rock. They handled more than 7 million cubic yards of earth and rock. Almost exactly a year from the day grading started, and six months ahead of schedule, the last rail went into place on the new Sherman Hill line. The new line around Sherman Hill didn't mean the old route was abandoned. Eastbound freights and east- and westbound passenger trains continued to go the old way. Westbound freights took the new line, which was engineered to reduce running time 15 minutes even though it is 9 miles longer.

The hard work done, UP #4007 begins the downhill drift

UP #4006 builds up speed as it gets ready to take a run at Sherman. Despite their size, the Big Boys were not a slow, lumbering machine. They had 68" drivers and were actually balanced for 80mph operation. I don't believe that 80mph capability was ever truly used, since the territory between Cheyenne and Green River was pretty tough. I also don't believe there were any instances of them being used in regular passenger service, but they probably could have been used in that capacity if necessary.

UP #4011 enters a cut at Dale on the Harriman Line.

The speed of the 4000s came in handy when racing those Pacific Fruit Express refrigerated boxcars 

On a frigid winter day, #4008 fights the cold grease in the journal boxes of mixed merchandise as it rolls under the bridge and out of Cheyenne yard.

UP #4019 with UP FEF-3 Northern #842 lending a hand. For almost the entirety of their career, the Northerns were restricted to passenger service only, but as the '50s pushed onwards, a combination of the Northerns getting bumped off top passenger trains by diesels and UP not wanting to perform major repairs to the Challengers and Big Boys as they wore out saw the FEFs getting unleashed in freight service. 

UP #4004 assaulting "The Hill" near Hermosa. #4004 is fittingly preserved at Cheyenne and when UP announced they were looking at restoring a Big Boy, the general consensus was that it would be #4004 due to proximity. 

The stoker on #4023 is clearly running at full tilt as it leaves Cheyenne. Either the fireman was trying to build up his fire before they hit Sherman Hill, or the photographer had given him instructions to make as much smoke as possible. I'm glad that the trend of getting the fireman to make as much black smoke as possible for a photo has died out, I think it looks awful. An interesting fact about the Big Boys was that when worked hard they burned 11 tons of coal an hour, and approximately 70% of the coal fed in by the stoker never hit the grates, it just burned in midair as the stoker chucked it in. David Page Morgan recounted riding in the cab of a Big Boy over Sherman Hill and at one point the stoker conked out on it, much to the consternation of the crew, since a Big Boy didn't run long without coal. The engineer backed the throttle down, and the fireman threw open the service hatches for the stoker auger and cycled the screw back and forth and it eventually spit out a 12" chunk of a broken drawbar pin that had gotten mixed in somehow and jammed the auger.

Changing times at Cheyenne. A Big Boy prepares to roll out of Cheyenne with a first-generation gas turbine electric coupled behind it, while another first-generation GTEL enters Cheyenne yard. Originally, Union Pacific had envisioned Baldwin's DR-12-8-1500/2 "Centipedes" in back-to-back A-A pairs replacing the Big Boys, resulting in a 6000hp pair with 171,200lbs of tractive effort. Fittingly, a Baldwin Centipede had a 2-D-D-2 wheel arrangement, which is a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement on a steam locomotive. The order placed in 1945, but then was canceled in April 1947 after a promised August 1946 delivery date was changed to August 1947. In late March 1947 a UP representative who visited the Baldwin factory near Philadelphia found that no material had been marked for the locomotive, or that any "lay-down plans" even existed. Union Pacific officials had also talked to Seaboard Air Line employees about the SAL's Centipedes that they owned, and the SAL had less than glowing reviews for the Baldwins, citing poor reliabity, difficult maintenance, profuse oil leaks, and incompatability with other equipment.

UP Challenger #3991 and Big Boy #4003 roar out of Cheyenne.

UP #3977, the other surviving Challenger, is one of the original "Greyhound" Challengers, which were a batch of 3900s that were specifically intended for passenger service and were delivered with elephant ear smoke deflectors and the two-tone grey with yellow striping that UP was using on it's passenger equipment at the time.