Western Railroad Discussion > Wattis Branch Utah Railway

A couple questions about Utah Railways 4.2% Wattis branch. I know the new flood loader was built in 1986-87.... I had previously read the branch was ripped out in 1987. I recently came across a picture of 4 Utah SD40 (grey and red) shoving a cut of coal cars up the branch at mp1 in 1992. So what year was service discontinued and the rails scrapped?

From Don Strack's excellent Utah Rails site here: http://utahrails.net/utah-ry/utah-ry-history.php

1986
Utah Railway's Wattis Branch was removed from service and abandoned, following the completion of the new flood loader built by Plateau Mining for its Star Point mine. The new flood loader was located on Utah Railway's mainline, and made use of a new 13,000-foot siding.

December 1, 1995
Utah Railway received regulatory approval to abandon its Wattis Branch on December 1, 1995. The trackage involved was from milepost 0.0 at Wattis Junction to milepost 2.4 at Wattis. No traffic had moved over the line for at least two years. (ICC Docket AB-310, sub 1X, service date October 26, 1995, published in Federal Register, November 1, 1995)

Dave Gayer had a picture in PRN of a train shoving the branch in 92. Wonder if they occasionally loaded a train at the old load-out after the flood loader was completed? The picture is in June of 98' issue. The train is definitely on the Wattis branch and the train has 4 UTAH Sd40's....hmmmmm.... Thanks for the abandonment info...



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/13 16:13 by jc76.

Here's the USGS topo map of the Wattis line, FWIW.

Taken from http://mapper.acme.com
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=39.53552,-111.00401&z=15&t=T&marker0=48.70105%2C-116.22131%2CCrossport%20id&marker1=46.10718%2C-111.39661%2Clombard%20mt&marker2=58.30194%2C-134.41972%2Cjuneau%20alaska&marker3=47.32660%2C-115.25264%2Cdrexel%20id

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I wondered if there was a small yard above the "mainline"...looks like there was....thanks! Anyone know how many cars they usually shoved up the branch at once?

Wattis did not have much of a yard, as shown in Blair Kooistra's photo from June 1981. The other photo is from a 1956 issue of Trains magazine.

The "yard" shown on the USGS map was for the tramway from the mine, up on the level of the mine car dump.

Yes, after the flood loader was built out on the mainline in 1986, and about once a month, or about 10 times per year, a few cars were shoved up the Wattis branch to be loaded for coal sold on the spot market. They were loaded by front-end loader.

Don Strack



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/13 12:59 by donstrack.

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