Steam & Excursion > Union Pacific Pile Driver on Ft. Collins branch

This is the picture which Bob K. mentions below and since it is a steam locomotive pile driver, I can probably post it here. The story on this picture: My step-grand-dad, William H. Dermody, worked for Union Pacific from about 1927 until 1962. He built bridges all over the UP system with several different sets of equipment. This one is my favorite because it is located on the Union Pacific Ft. Collins Colorado branch line. My family had a lot of involvement in the Ft. Collins branch over the years. This bridge is over Trilby Road and is still used twice a week by the Union Pacific Ft. Collins switch job. This picture was actually taken by my Grandma Ruth, who was really the best photographer in our family in 1960. The Trilby Road bridge is now a pain for the City government as they would like to 4-lane Trilby Road. This could be a multi-million dollar project.

Jim Burrill
Hamilton, Montana.

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Fantastic shot. I have driven under that bridge many hundreds of times and always enjoyed the sight of it, even caught trains on it.

Don Allender

Those steam pile drivers were interesting machines to watch.
Your photo is really an excellent illustration.
Also like the two Chevrolet trucks.
ALLEN 

If the city wants to 4-lane the road under the bridge, does that mean all the open farmland in the background is gone-developed-over run with clone homes??

Looks like the tender carries coal, which I assume was hand-shoveled over to the pile driver, but how was water transferred?  I don't see any hose connections, and with the boiler mounted in the part of the machine that rotates, semi-permanent couplings might be problematic.  For that matter, how did oil-fired pile drivers and wrecking derricks whose boilers pivoted with the hoisting machinery above the frames get fuel and water from their tenders to their boilers?

Thanks for sharing the photo, Jim. It's nice to see a side view of these fascinating machines. Here is a roster of UP's Pile Drivers. (Scroll down about 3/4 for 903113)

http://utahrails.net/up/900000-pile-drivers.php

UP Pile Driver 03113 was built by Industrial Brownhoist in April 1931. Renumbered to UP 903113 in April 1959. Retired in October 1982.

UP tender 07922 was a 12,000-gallon cylindrical tender (Class 12-C) built in December 1922. It was equipped with an oil fuel bunker, and was last assigned to UP 4-8-2 7017. When UP 7017 was retired in December 1955, its tender was set aside for potential other use. It was renumbered to UP 07922 in December 1957, and renumbered again to UP 907922 in April 1959. It was retired at the same time as the pile driver, in October 1982.

Fun Fact: UP tender 07922 in the photo was actually the second tender with that number. The first was a 7,000-gallon cylindrical tender (Class 7-C) built in September 1909 and last assigned to 4-6-2 2833, retired December 1933. The tender was renumbered to UP 07922 (1st) in April 1934, and was retired in January 1951.

Don Strack
http://utahrails.net/

The farmland in this picture is rapidly filling up with homes, especially on the left side of the picture. It's been three months since I was there but there was still some undeveloped land on the right side of the road.

A quick google peek for current comparison if I am correct.

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Thanks for the great photo of the current appearance. You can see the steeple of the new LDS temple in Ft. Collins in this picture.

I used to bale hay in that field on the left and shoot at geese on the right. Man that last shot seems wrong...

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