Good evening from San Diego!!!!

My good friend and Railroad Teacher Wayne Beever (the retired Burlington station agent in Palmyra, Missouri) recently sent me an interesting series of three photographs. It is of a special Burlington westbound passenger excursion passing through Palmyra, Missouri and is headed up by the 5632.

Wayne is pretty sure that he took the pix in July of 1963 and that the occasion was to celebrate the start of the Transcontinental Railroad. I have Lloyd Stagner’s book, ‘Burlington Route Steam Finale’ and there is nothing specific about this trip mentioned.

What makes the train interesting is the diverse consist, certainly unlike any other Q steam trip. I canÂ’t positively identify every car, but from what I can tell, here is the lineup:

5632 itself
CB&Q Havelock Baggage (green)
CB&Q Dome (not one of the pattern domes)
New Haven car, unknown type
New Haven car, unknown type, named Lord ????
CB&Q Diner Silver Salver (built in 1948 for the Twin Cities Zephyr)
Southern Pacific Car, unknown type
Pennsylvania Car, unknown type
Unknown lightweight car (possibly New York Central? Silver scheme, black top)
Unknown car, line unknown
Illini Railroad Club heavyweight observation, Chief Illini

Can anybody out there provide any details on this trip?

Thanks in advance,
Burlington John




CBQJohn@hotmail.com

The New Haven cars were sleepers, Lord Point was a 14-roomette, 4-double bedroom car in the "Point" series. By the mid-1960s, there were plenty of these sitting around, and were probably placed into Pullman pool service. CB&Q (and other roads) could simply call Pullman and get a bunch of cars out of the yards on short notice for trips like that. Was that trip possibly one of Illini's long distance overnight runs to Denver?


hpincus@mindspring.com

While I wasn't quite old enough to partake in these trips on my own I remember seeing some flyers we got in the mail, and drooling over some of them. As I recall there were a couple of trips that went like this!
(1) 5632 Chicago to Omaha
(2) UP 8444 Omaha to Denver
(3) The tour continued to Alamosa, and a 3 day trip was made to Durango and back to Alamosa,
(4) 8444 Denver to Omaha
(5) 5632 Omaha to Chicago

There may have been more in Colorado, or a third mainline engine I may have missed. I thought one time the 4960 was used on a leg as well. Anyone else remember the long mainline trips?

Can you imagine such a trip today!!!
Greg Scholl

Videos and such
sales@gregschollvideo.com

> While I wasn't quite old enough to partake
> in these trips on my own I remember seeing
> some flyers we got in the mail, and drooling
> over some of them. As I recall there were a
> couple of trips that went like this!
> (1) 5632 Chicago to Omaha
> (2) UP 8444 Omaha to Denver
> (3) The tour continued to Alamosa, and a 3
> day trip was made to Durango and back to
> Alamosa,
> (4) 8444 Denver to Omaha
> (5) 5632 Omaha to Chicago

> There may have been more in Colorado, or a
> third mainline engine I may have missed. I
> thought one time the 4960 was used on a leg
> as well. Anyone else remember the long
> mainline trips?

> Can you imagine such a trip today!!!
> Greg Scholl

Greg: I remember these scheduled trips well although I never took one (much to my chagrin.) Not all of the ones planned were actually run. I recall one that the Railroad Club of Chicago tried to run. As best I can recall, I think they planned on using the 5632 on the east end and the UP's 844 on the west end. Highlight of the trip was that one passenger was going to win the number plate off of scrapped UP 4-8-4 #843. I recall Jim Neubauer of the Railroad Club of Chicago showing the 843 number plate mounted on a nice piece of dark wood. Unfortunately, the trip did not run as not enough tickets were sold by the "cut off date." I have often wondered what happened to the 843 number plate.

midlandblb@cs.com

One of those trips in 1960, was inadvertently responsible for the creation of the UP steam program. UP management had given the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club a firm "No" to any more steam trips. The club knew that 844 was serviceable (or close to serviceable) as a snow melter at Council Bluffs.

They had already contracted with the CB&Q for a trip from Chicago to Denver using 5632. When the UP management in Omaha reiterated their "No," the club sent a cashier's check for $5000 to E. Roland Harriman, the UP Chairman in New York. They got a call from UP's General Passenger Agent in Denver asking them when and where they would like to run their trip, and in the future to please direct any special steam requests to Omaha. While the Burlington end of the trip fell through, 844 was ferried to Cheyenne, and in November, 1960, the first UP steam excursion ran from Cheyenne to Laramie. The rest, as they say, is history.

This information was reported by the late Ross Grenard in Railfan & Railroad to commemorate the 20th anniversary of that trip in 1980. Ross wrote several books on UP and Rio Grande steam. We used to attend the same church 25 years ago, and spent many a coffee hour debating the aesthetic merits of smoke deflectors on the 800's. I like them, and he did not.

kevingillespie@usa.net