I thought I'd share some detail photos of a D&RGW narrow gauge boxcar and gondola that I took in April 1981. At the time they were located at the Lagoon amusement park in Farmington, Utah. They were later moved to Ogden Union Station in Ogden, Utah, and they were burned in March 2006 when an adjacent building caught fire and was allowed to burn.

http://donstrack.smugmug.com/UtahRails/ ... ge-Detail/

They were originally donated by D&RGW in the mid to late 1950s to Horace Sorensen's Pioneer Village on Conner Street in Salt Lake City. They may have been D&RGW's contibution to Sons of Utah Pioneers efforts from all railroads, when in 1959 UP and SP each donated a 2-8-0 that were displayed at Corinne and later moved to Heber. The D&RGW equipment may have been small enough to be moved to Pioneer Village, whereas the larger UP and SP equipment had to find a home next to real railroad tracks.

In 1956 Sorensen donated his Pioneer Village collection to Sons of Utah Pioneers, and in 1975 the entire Pioneer Village collection was sold to Lagoon for $275,000. I don't know when the two narrow gauge cars, and the short eight-wheel caboose that was part of the collection, were moved to Ogden. That may have been in 1989 when the small steam railroad was removed to make way for a water park called Lagoon-A-Beach, which itself replaced a 50-year-old "Million Gallon" swimming pool.

Is there any information on when certain D&RGW cars, by car number, were donated; specifically D&RGW boxcar 3576, gondola 1051, and caboose 0573.

Don Strack

Good stuff here, Don. Between 223 on display in Liberty Park, and the D&RGW cars at Lagoon, I quickly became a narrow-gauge fan. I remember that for several years they sat behind the old UP depot in Pioneer Village, which was home to the "Old Ironsides" (Pioneer Village Railroad) 24" gauge attraction (it used a Crown 4-4-0). They were in terrible shape by the early 1990s.

The cars moved to Ogden around 1994-95 when the park decided not to reopen the PVRR following the Lagoon-A-Beach construction. Howard Freed, curator of Pioneer Village, now regrets that decision since the cars were allowed to fall into further disrepair and then were consumed by fire.

I just completed an article about Lagoon and its miniature railroads for Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading. However, I was never able to find a photo of the Pioneer Village train in operation. I don't suppose you photographed that as well? All I have is fuzzy memories.

Jeff Terry

Was your article in the Vol. 33 No. 1 Jan-Feb 1999 issue of Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading?

As for photos, we took our daughter to Lagoon several times in the early and mid 1980s when she was 4 to 7 years old. We may have a family photo on 35mm color negative that shows something other than a cute little girl having the time of her life riding a train. I may have taken a shot or two of the equipment.

Don Strack

Yep, that's my article in the Jan-Feb 1999 issue of Live Steam. The one I wrote with John Rimmasch about the restoration of his 1904 Cagney 4-4-0. I'd totally forgotten about that.

If you have any photos of Lagoon's miniature trains, I'd love to see them. I searched around for about four years looking for some from the 1975-1987 time period, with no success.

Jeff Terry
transplanted Utahn