Nostalgia & History > Got UP Idaho Div 1950s empl timetables?

You guys remember that Elliott Erwitt pic of the
UP 4-6+6-4 with reefers running parallel to the
highway, lit by low sun, shot from a car.
I forgot about the other pic, maybe of the same
train, showing a 4-6+6-4 with 2-262 in the
numberboards.

It's a good bet the famous pic is just east of
Bancroft, Idaho, so: in what years was 262 a schedule
thru there, and in what years does the schedule agree
with the pic's lighting?

Erwitt's well-known photo, usually titled Wyoming USA 1954, is definitely just east of Bancroft. The site is relatively unchanged today.

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timz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You guys remember that Elliott Erwitt pic ...

> It's a good bet the famous pic is just east of
> Bancroft, Idaho, so: in what years was 262 a
> schedule thru there, and in what years does the schedule
> agree with the pic's lighting?


Hello,

That is a great photo, although it's always bothered me a bit that it's in Idaho and is titled "Wyoming 1954..." :-P

Here are links to the photos for those not familiar with them:

http://www.parisphoto.com/content/events_images/1666/file/slideshow/527ba65b0f52cee092.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/eoPDbNO.jpg


I don't have an ID TT but I think we can come up with most answers anyhow. The sun angle gives us a time of day somewhere in late afternoon / early evening. We can also assume it's 1954 given the photo's caption/title. The pic shows it's an eastward train, handling one or more fruit blocks which would make the symbol either NF, PNF or HF, or some combo of those. It also seems likely that the photo out the window showing the "2-262" in the locomotive's train indicator is the same train shot within a few minutes of the Hwy 30 / Bancroft shot. If so, that fits well with conductor's books I have that show 262 & sections departing Montpelier (further east) in the late evening / early morning hours (between 10:30pm and 1:00am).

From those pics it's not clear what season of the year it was. There appears to be snow in the ditches and the steam exhaust and closed reefer hatches make me think it was a cold time of year, but I can't really tell. Does anyone else have a better view on a poster or something to help nail that down? (update later: on a better photo you can see snow in the ditches and on the mountains in the distance).


Take care,

Mark



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/15 11:11 by mamfahr.

A friend has lent me his Idaho timetable for 1932. It shows train 260 eastbound through Bancroft at 6:50 am, and train 261 westbound at 6:30 pm.

Here are a few photos by Emil Albrecht at or near Bancroft in August 1953:

http://donstrack.smugmug.com/UtahRails/Emil-Albrecht-Photos/Aug-1953-Bancroft-to-Soda/

Don Strack

The Bancroft pic is http://i.imgur.com/I5Y9Ayp.jpg .
The 1949 timetable shows 262 meeting 105 at Bancroft
at 6:00 PM MST. So when did the line get CTC, and
did schedule 262 exist after that?

You could always message Elliott Erwitt and ask him. He's very much alive and quite an interesting person. Not a railfan, though.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/jun/07/photography.exhibition



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/15 12:34 by grahamline.

timz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The 1949 timetable shows 262 meeting 105 at
> Bancroft
> at 6:00 PM MST. So when did the line get CTC, and
> did schedule 262 exist after that?

The UPHS reprint book of UP timetables shows that Montpelier to Pocatello were operated as part of the Utah Division, Fifth Subdivision, with UT Div timetable No. 1 dated February 29, 1948. It shows the line as block signals. Time freight 262, eastbound, passed Bancroft at 6:01 pm. The westbound 263 passed Bancroft at 3:50 pm. Google shows that the highway is on the south side of the tracks.

Don Strack

Idaho potato traffic was strong over the winter, providing a nice complement to California and Oregon/Washington reefer traffic, which slowed down considerably compared to summertime and early fall volumes. Perishable traffic on the HF would have been light in the winter, so the big fruit block in the photo was a PNF or an NF.

Once CTC was put in service, train IDs like 262 would have disappeared, so the photo was taken before CTC was installed through Bancroft.

Best regards,

Rob L.

> ...So when did the line get CTC, and did schedule 262 exist after that?

Hello,

That segment of mainline was extensively upgraded over a 3-year period 1955-57. They reconfigured/extended many sidings, installed 7 new sidings, installed color-light signals at different (1 1/2 mi.) intervals, installed CTC and constructed 8 mi. of new mainline (west of Kemmerer) that eliminated the (eastward) helper district that was there.

As Rob mentioned, once CTC was completely in place, there wouldn't have been any need for 262 and the other TT schedules. Of course, they retained the symbol freight schedules (such as PNF, NF...).

Take care,

Mark

> ...Perishable traffic on the HF would
> have been light in the winter, so the big fruit
> block in the photo was a PNF or an NF.


Hello Rob,

I checked a few 1956 dispatcher's records I have that show trains through there in the "off-season" and they seem to fit with our thinking on this. They tended to run a group of 2-3 perishable trains through Bancroft each evening, all of them carrying the PNF symbol. It's very likely that's what we're seeing in the photo.

I see that the Hinkle Fruit trains/blocks did continue to run in the off-season but tended to run at a different time of day, showing up in the early / mid-morning (4am, 830am, etc) hours. Off-peak, the HF's were always (in the records I've seen) combined with other trains out of Pocatello due to the low traffic volumes you describe. That makes the "big fruit block" that we see in the pic less meaningful since they'd often combine fruit blocks at Poc and sometimes add lumber/manifest-type traffic to fill out trains to ideal lengths/tonnage. I mentioned this in my presentation in Ogden also, as UP did the same thing with RV trains from the SP in that era, often combining multiple fruit blocks into what appears to be a solid block on a train. Here's an example of one of those combined trains, eastbound through Bancroft, Idaho Oct 20, 1956:

Symbol "Stock/HF276/PNF559/CBX17" (Hinkle Fruit / Pocatello-Nampa Fruit / Council Bluffs Manifest, with livestock)
power: UP 1515-1526B-1504B (F3s)
85-4-4546
through Bancroft about 4:00am,
- 7 cattle for Denver on the headend,
- 51 perishable (the HF and PNF portions),
- 31 manifest on the rear (the CBX portion).

Getting back to the subject of schedules, it appears that the evening PNF "fleet" most often ran as sections of No. 262, as with the "2-262" shown in the photo. The 1515 mentioned above could have been run as a late section of 262 but more likely ran as an extra, given the circumstances. I see from early/mid 1950s records that roughly 2/3 of eastward OSL freights ran over that territory using TT schedules, about 1/3 as extras.

Take care,

Mark