I go to California weekly on a run and recently noticed a long line of old coal cars on a siding at MM 22 in New Mexico in I 10. At first I thought it was a derailment, but the next time I passed there were more on the ground. I know these cars are newer, but a lot of them still carry road names of long forgotten railroads like DR&W, MP, and others. Has anyone reached out to UP to see about getting a few donated here and there for display? I know we wouldn't think to save cars like this, but some day down the road, future generations will ask why we didn't.

The ones I've mentioned were probably sold to a scrapper long ago, but UP may still have others that haven't yet been retired.

Just a thought.

PS, I tried to attach a picture of the cars, but it wouldn't upload. I'm sorry I can't identify them another way.

MS

Could you provide coordinates? (I know New Mexico well, but I was not aware of these cars).

You could reach out to the Wheels Transportation Museum in ABQ. They are located in part of the old ATSF shops, and it will hopefully be where #2926 is housed in the future.

I-10, MM22 should be Lordsburg, with yard facilities.
Chuck

That might be the loop track where the line from the Freeport McMoRan Morenci copper mine comes into Lordsburg. Not sure what the loop is used for, maybe tank car storage. Morenci has a reduction plant that brings in a lot of tank cars. I don't know much about the operation. Freeport used to have a smelter south of Lordsburg - that line came off the main about 20 some miles east of Lordsburg - so maybe Freeport shuttled hoppers back & forth. If I were to guess, I say the hoppers belong to Freeport. An image would show reporting marks and you'd know for sure.

Lordsburg is the junction with the former SP, nee-Arizona & New Mexico line to Clifton operated by the Arizona Eastern,. a Genesee & Wyoming line since 2008. AZER had some somewhat vintage roling stock, including some somewhat modern two-bay hoppers:

http://rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=AZER&cid=5

I can think of two museums that might have reason to save one if it's worth it, not counting any photo freight operators or the like, but I think the museums I'm thinking of already have examples.

Try resizing your photos--the old standards of this site require photos to be under about 350K, which used to be huge and now is below the "basic" settings of most digital cameras.

Thanks, I'm a little bit more edumacated now. I wonder what the hoppers were for. There's no ore hauled by rail from the mine. Hmmm... Looking at the photos of the two-bays, those would make nice little ballast cars.

They may just be from UP's past mergers, but they may be the remains of the "great steel fleet" (a name applied to Rio Grande's cars, I'm not sure if that was a company nickname or if it was just employees or fans that called it that). In the early Nineties when SP and RG were under common ownership (under the name Southern Pacific, but Rio Grande had bought SP) and SP was able to win the contract to haul taconite pellets (iron ore and dolomite mixed together) to Geneva Steel in Utah from Minnesota with WC involved too, the way they were able to undercut UP was by backhauling RG coal to Illinois whereas UP went back empty. Taconite can't be hauled in aluminum hoppers (too abrasive), so they picked up many steel hopper cars secondhand with the old road names you mention, plus the original RG cars which were all steel. UP bought SP partially to end this undercutting, but Geneva went bankrupt soon after and has been dismantled I believe. I lived 100 feet from the RG in 1992 and used to walk past these cars stopped on the siding in Pinecliffe many times, I think the initials were all private leasing initials ending with X but with the old road names still there.

I've tried uploading the photo I took more than once. But I'm posting from my cell phone so resizing may not work. I'll pass them again on Thursday this next week and try to get some really shots then. My thought was more that they had been sold by UP to be scrapped.

As for the location, I'm having trouble finding it on Google earth. MM 22 on 10 drops you smack in the middle of Lordsburg, NM, but that's not where they are. I can't remember if they're east or west or Lordsburg either so it'll have to wait until Thursday.

In the meantime I have cropped the photo and will try to upload it again.

MS

There is a siding between the rest stop and the Highway 146 interchange. 4 miles west of the continental divide. https://goo.gl/maps/BhLbgW5Qtty

The loop track at Lordsburg is for a ballast quarry/loading operation. The AZER uses the small 2-bay hoppers as well as UP hoppers to haul copper concentrate from Chino Mines located near Silver City. They also load concentrate up in Morenci, but the last time I saw that operation (several years ago) there were loading concentrate in flat bottom gons. The concentrate goes to Freeport's smelter in Miami, AZ.

The Union Pacific owns the reporting marks of most, if not all, of the railroads that have been merged into its system ("fallen flags"). We regularly see relatively new (sans graffiti) coal cars with CMO reporting marks in Richmond, CA. The CMO was the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha, a railroad that was merged into the CNW way before the CNW/UP merger.

Those cars were part of a daily coal train that ran from a coal mine in Northern Colorado (don't remember the name) and served one of the Colorado coal fired power plants (I believe it was near Pueblo). From what I have heard the coal mine was closed and the power plant was converted from coal to natural gas. The train was unique in the fact that it was all steel coal cars. Quite a rarity on the main line anymore. Sad to hear of this trains passing.

Filmed this train many times on the Moffat route. Last time I saw this train was in July of 2017. Here is video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWIpDhdhK7o

These cars were gathered together for magnetite service. A by product of copper production it is almost pure iron. The Santa Rita mine has large stockpiles of this material North of Hurley N.M. The magnetite was shipped to China. These hoppers came from UP, DRGW, and MP. The lines on the DRGW hopper showed the load height for ballast service. When loaded with magnetite it was about 18" to two foot deep in the bottom of the car. The loaded cars went to Mexico for shipment. This service ended after a train ran away down the 6% grade after not performing a proper brake test. Those who perished were friends and co-workers of mine. Big steel things will smush you like a bug. This didn't hit the news as a passenger wreck in the east the same day.