Preserved UP Steam Tenders

Don Strack · **Posted:** Sun May 11, 2008 10:27 am

I was doing some work on other pages on my UtahRails web site, and discovered that the information about UP's two (three) preserved steam tenders ("Water Cars") was hidden pretty well.

I broke the information out to its own page and need to tap into the collective to make sure that the information is accurate. Any help would be appreciated.

http://www.utahrails.net/pass/water-cars.html

If I can find some photos before and after the conversion from little FEF version, to insulated GTE version, to the current restored version, an article could be put together for UPHS's The Streamliner.

Looking at the photos on the Wasatch Railroad Contractors web site brings back some good (and bad) memories of 10 years as a UP boilermaker; back when the derricks were still steam. It's amazing how big a guy can be when presented with having to re-brick and re-mud a couple dinky little derrick fireboxes. The old heads from Cheyenne got a chuckle about the difference between what was on the derricks, and being inside a 4000's firebox.

Don Strack

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Sun May 11, 2008 11:33 am

Don,

I know for a fact that at least one, maybe two, ex-UP GTE tenders ended up stored at a facility (rail car repair shop?) in/near Camp Hill, Pa. probably just off of Shiremanstown Yard, back in the 1970s; they were there well into the 1980s, as I remember. They were easily visible from local highways (I want to say 11/15 or the connector that became I-581).

Does anyone know if these were ever repatriated, or did they eventually get scrapped? Maybe Dan Cupper might know?

Bob Kutella · **Posted:** Sun May 11, 2008 3:53 pm

IRM has the Turbine, UP 18 and UP 18B; and the 'third' unit is clearly an ex steam tender. I am not aware of its heritage but it looks sharp in Armour Yellow behind the repainted tubine A nand B unit.

Bob Kutella

Bruce Manwiller · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:25 pm **Posts:** 41

Around 1975, at about the same time I learned that GTE tenders were kitbashed from pairs of 4-12-2 tenders, one GTE tender showed up behind No. 1 Blast Furnace to serve as a fuel tank for an experimental sintering operation at Colt Industries' Crucible Steel Plant in Midland PA.

The sintering operation ended before the plant was sold, and new owner LTV probably scrapped the GTE tender and fed it to the nearby UHP electric arc furnaces in the melt shop.