UPRR Boiler car hunt?

BigBoy 4023 · **Joined:** Tue Dec 11, 2012 1:40 am **Posts:** 489

Evening, I am trying to track down information on what happened to UPRR steam generator cars B-1 and B-2? Built from former C&O tenders these two steam generators ended up being sold to the SPRR. I haven't been able to turn up so much as a single photograph of either in service for the SPRR.

Robert

ekrwy2 · **Joined:** Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:12 pm **Posts:** 121

Are you talking about this car?
https://photos.smugmug.com/Union-Pacifi ... ment-L.jpg
That’s the only image I could find.

Trainkid456 · **Joined:** Thu May 05, 2016 6:30 pm **Posts:** 240

Here might be some useful info, if you haven’t seen this already: http://utahrails.net/pass/company-service-cars.php

Thomas

BigBoy 4023 · **Joined:** Tue Dec 11, 2012 1:40 am **Posts:** 489

Those are the correct cars in the links. Would seem they never went to SP as another website had claimed.

Robert

Overmod · **Joined:** Thu May 24, 2012 1:37 pm **Posts:** 2492

Quote:

"I haven't been able to turn up so much as a single photograph of either in service for the SPRR."

The question would be 'what would SP have used them for'?

From the timing it seems pretty clear that B-1 and B-2 weren't wanted, or needed, by Amtrak, and it's hard to think of an SP application for them that wouldn't involve Amtrak-operated trains. If for some reason they were sold into SP service after being retired, I'd see what MOW use SP could make out of something with a whole water bottom's worth of combustible fuel for a SG and then look in records for those places...

BigBoy 4023 · **Joined:** Tue Dec 11, 2012 1:40 am **Posts:** 489

I am thinking it might be more worth while to try and track down UP records suggesting the location of the cars being scrapped. I would assume UP would have most likely cut them up in Cheyenne or Ogden, etc.

Robert

LeoA · **Joined:** Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:30 am **Posts:** 312

I wasn't aware of these steam generator cars, but it's interesting how many 2nd lives a number of these tenders enjoyed on the Union Pacific. Must've been a lot of life left in them, judging by how repurposed they were.

Two served as tenders for those two Lima rotary snowplows that UP received at the end of the 1940's, at least two of the three of their home-built diesel rotaries used former C&O tenders as their foundation (So at least one C&O tender is still active in a way on the Union Pacific in 2018), at least two or three others were used for water storage, and at least one other was rebuilt for use for fuel storage.

And didn't a lot of them get sold to Southern Pacific for upgrading some of their locomotives with higher capacity tenders?

John T · **Joined:** Sun Sep 14, 2014 5:05 pm **Posts:** 1270

I can think of one possible use the SP may have had for these cars. The SP rotary plows use steam to clear the sticky snow from the blades.

waynecohen · **Joined:** Tue Jul 12, 2016 11:38 pm **Posts:** 5

I’m posting from memory (a dangerous thing), but I believe that right around 1949 or 1950 UP sold several of their ex C&O tenders to the SP for use behind AC9 class 2-8-8-4s when they were converted from coal to oil firing. Perhaps that’s the SP connection of which the OP is thinking?