According to Facebook, Roundhouse Restoration Inc, the group working on restoring the former Union Pacific Evanston WY Roundhouse, is looking to move and restore the former UP switcher 4420, located in an Evanston park.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_ ... 4228886872

Does anyone have more information on this?

I posted about it on Flimsies a month and a half ago:
https://uintacountyherald.com/article/h ... o-be-moved

The UP 4420 is being moved to the Evanston Roundhouse on Thursday, Nov. 19th (weather permitting).
It will then undergo an evaluation to set up either a restoration or conservation plan.

Just found out the move has been delayed until some time in the future.

#4420 has now been moved to the Evanston roundhouse. It's outside on a short piece of panel track for the time being. I hoped to observe and photograph the move, but my connection fell through and so I found out from someone else after the fact.

David,

Is the roundhouse still connected to live rail or not?

Thanks,

Rob Gardner

It appears to be sitting backwards. It will go in tender first. Strange way to display a locomotive in a roundhouse.

News article with more details:
https://uintacountyherald.com/article/1 ... roundhouse

No it's not. Maybe in specific regions it may be odd to back a locomotive into the roundhouse, but almost every photograph I've ever seen of roundhouses in the Rocky Mountains and west, about half the time if not more locomotives were positioned tender first through the door so that they can leave moving forwards. There's nothing unusual about its position.

See:
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=439773&q=roundhouse&facet_setname_s=dha_%2A
http://www.railphoto-art.org/collections/hal-lewis-collection/

Interesting quotes from the article:

"(Steve) Lee had formerly worked for UP in Cheyenne, where he was in charge of 4,000 steam engines." I had no idea UP had 4000 steam engines when Steve Lee was there.

"Horne said there are thousands of steam engine “nuts” who will volunteer to help with cleaning and restoration." Evanston better build a new hotel for all of them.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have a railroad museum with a spaghetti restaurant in the Roundhouse?” Horne said. “People would come from all over the world to see it.”

Well, I applaud their enthusiasm anyway.

To line up with that here is a period photo of the Ogden Roundhouse from sometime in the 1930's showing the majority of engines were facing forward tender back out of the roundhouse with a few facing tender out instead. I did find a SP photo from their Ogden facilities in the 1950's though and they were all tender out, so it suggests the practice may have varied by year by railroad.

https://donstrack.smugmug.com/UtahRails ... -QvkdPFZ/A

Just keep in mind that the media is this bad or worse at EVERYTHING they cover, not just trains. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

It could be noted that in all three of the linked photos all or practically all of the engines that were nose out were switch engines, were outside the house on the leads (just rear of tenders in the house), and in the UP photos they almost all appear to be hot - and the house chimneys are in the outer ends of the stalls, not the inner, which would only support hot engines being nose-in. It was probably that even local switch engines there were brought back to the house for a once-over at change of trick, so the best time to get a photo of the house all busy was at trick change.

It's more interesting that David states the engine is on a piece of panel track. There's plenty of track still intact around the roundhouse and there are tracks to the table, so why would they unload it onto panel track? And one track (sand track?) passes adjacent to the concrete patio area near the oil house and leads to the table, but they put lamp posts right at the edge of the concrete so the track is largely unusable, paved over or obstructed several tracks that could have been very useful to a RR museum, and pledged 3 of the four roundhouse sections to retail and light industrial (and the other one is nicely finished as an event hall). This when they have equipment to store/display, including at least a steam locomotive that needs to be under cover - and they complained about children falling off of when it was outside and unsupervised access. Seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for the project in Evanston, but not a lot of common sense RR thought - a shame for a town that owes most of its existence to the RR. I hope they have the money to continue evolving their project to something that really befits the RR heritage and a proper museum, not another Steamtown boondoggle. And what if UP does offload some more of their historic fleet? Evanston has some tremendous potential with that, if it isn't turned into a Subway/Spaghetti Factory and a tire warehouse.

Yes, I worked in TV news for 18 years. I'm really just poking fun at my own profession. That being said, I did everything I could during that time to promote accurate reporting of railroad stories while I was there.

Confucius once said "IS FAR CHEAPER AND EASIER TO LIFT TENDER FROM TURNTABLE PIT THAN LOCOMOTIVE"