Western Railroad Discussion > Ghost of the SP

My wife and I took a few of the kids up to Salt Lake this morning so she could hit a dahlia plant sale in Sugarhouse.  We're big gardners (ok, so I'm the groundskeeper and she's the Queen gardner), and we're going for a big flower garden this year.  After that stop, we decided to head to our favorite gluten free bakery in Bountiful.  As we were passing UP's North Salt Lake Yard on I-15, I noticed a very unusual site - a patched SP AC4400CW, and the train it was in was heading north out of the yard.  I looked at my wife and asked if we could take a little detour before the bakery.  She might have rolled her eyes while she said yes, so I went looking for a photo spot.  I ended up at the Woods Cross station for the UTA Frontrunner.  Wasn't the most scenic location, but I didn't have a ton of time, and I needed a safe place to park the van.  Train showed up a few minutes later and I ended up with a nice video.  The train was a 5x1 locomotive configuration, and it was accelerating towards the end of the video which was fun to notice.  I wasn't 100% sure until I posted the sighting on Heritage Units, but this was the MWCNP.  Anyone know if it does work in Ogden now, or does it just roll on through on it's way to North Platte?  

It wasn't until tonight as I was looking up info on all the locomotives that I realized there was one other ex-SP AC4400CW in the mix.  UP #6394 was built for the SP as #348, but I don't know when it got the full repaint.  As for the object of the hunt, UP #6236 as built as SP #257 almost 30 years ago, and the UP/SP merger was only a year after that.  So there's a chance I saw one or both of these units hauling coal on the SP here in Utah while I was in college or while I was home for the summer in California back then.  Crazy that it was that long ago when these things were new!  I took a few pictures of the AC4400CWs then, but not enough as I was modeling the Santa Fe Superfleet.  SP was my home railroad growing up, and now I model them, too.  Should have taken more pictures, thank goodness for the internet.  The AC4400CWs were definitely my favorite SP units, they were brutes for sure.  

So here's the breakdown on today's 5x1 locomotive consist, not a new unit in the bunch:

• UP #8694    EMD SD70ACe                       built between 8-2011 & 10-2011
• UP #6236    GE C44ACM (AC4400CW)    built as SP #257,  6-1995
• UP #7240    GE C44ACM (AC4400CW)    built 8-1999
• UP #6394    GE C44ACM (AC4400CW)    built as SP #348,  8-1995
• UP #7498    GE C45ACCTE (ES44AC)    built between 4-2011 & 8-2011

I found the build information and previous SP #s courtesy of The Diesel Shop, https://www.thedieselshop.us/UP.HTML

*If you want to see the full quality video, head over to that other video site and look for Nathan's Trains.

Nathan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/24 22:47 by atsf121.

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Cool catch on the patched SP; didn't know that there's still 5 left.

Lee

Nice video!

texchief1

Very nice video thanks for posting