Nostalgia & History > UP'S Last GP35s

In 1983 UP found itself with a number of locomotive models it thought it had purged from its roster. One such model was the GP35, inherited from the WP in the December 1982 merger. UP found these units to be worthy to keep around as the entire fleet had been rebuilt by M/K just a few years previous. (M/K added the Pyle National gyra-lites during the rebuild, a feature UP removed within a few years). Here's a pair of photos from the early years of the merger on former WP lines.

1. UP GP35 783 leads the SJT (San Jose Turn) out of the Milpitas CA yard on its way back to Stockton. Five years previous and this train would have seen WP F7As as the power! The date is August 14, 1984. (© KPR Media Services, all rights reserved)

2. Two months after photo no. 1 we find WP GP9 731 in a Green Machine sandwich, with x-WP GP35s 786-787 on either end at Milpitas Yard on October 4, 1984. (© KPR Media Services, all rights reserved)

Another reason "I love the Eighties!" :-)

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Good looking units, well photographed.  I caught a couple of those ex-WP GP35's on Watco's South Kansas & Oklahoma railroad in 1995, still in faded UP yellow with the Union Pacific name black-lined on the hood. 

The WP units were the last GP35's UP saw fit to repaint in its own colors, but they weren't the last GP35's UP had to get rid of.  SP had been whittling down its fleet of GP35's for years but still had about a dozen 6300's on the roster at the time of the UP-SP merger in 1996.  The last of those were retired by UP in 1999, still wearing SP paint and road numbers.