Nostalgia & History > Remember UP Wells Branch

Lee Meyers took this slide of this Through Truss Bridge near Wells Nevada taken on June 19. 1993. This was on the branch from Twin Falls to Wells long since abandoned.

When was this line abandoned ?


Thanks for looking and see you down the Trail ?


Jay

---

Yes remember the branch, 1970, was to young to drive but on vacation with parents drove from Twin Falls to Wells , got an old pic of a depot along the line, was told UP ran 3 times a week back then, rails were shinny but never saw a train.

Ah, yes...one of my favorite non-logging railroad subjects...

The Wells Branch survived as long as it did because UP, SP, and WP had a "Wells Gateway" tariff established for traffic interchanged between the UP and the WP-SP...there was essentially no on-line traffic on the bulk of the line after the end of livestock movements by the late 1950s, and the trains ran almost exclusively at night, hence the lack of almost any photographs of the line. The last trains ran in January 1973, after UP reached an agreement whereby it delivered Wells Gateway tariff traffic to the WP at Salt Lake City and the SP at Ogden. UP and OSL filed a joint application to abandon the line from Wells to Rogerson on 30 June 1978...as part of the application, UP indicated it had interchanged a total of 7,983 Wells Gateway tariff cars to and from the WP and SP between January 1973 and April 1978. The ICC blessed the abandonment on 21 August 1978. On 1 October of that year a group of railfans did a wildcat speeder run from Wells to Contact and back. Actual abandonment occurred either in 1979 or very early 1980...and then almost as soon as it happened Sierra Pacific Power announced plans to build a new coal fired power plant in the Thousand Springs valley northeast of Wells. Had that come to pass, it probably would have required rebuilding part of the southern end of the line. However, Sierra Pacific cancelled its plans. UP has been slowly selling or otherwise disposing of the right-of-way since...I've had a few dealings with it through the last decade, and the railroad may still have parts of the old r-o-w.

Attached are three pictures of the grade, the water tower base and grade at Melandco and then the overgrown grade at Shores. There are at least a couple UP pump houses still standing along the line, one at Wilkins and another at Henry.

I don't have in front of me when UP abandoned the line from Rogerson north through Hollister to Twin Falls...but a small portion of the line at Twin Falls is still in place and used as an industrial track.

Fascinating line...I wish there was more out there about it.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

---

---

---

One more...the wye at Summer Camp.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

---

Driven along a bit of it. Allot of it is still intact.

Its pretty easy to follow on google earth.

I have some old slides of a UP local that went down to a grain elevator south of Twin Falls to a place called Berger on 8/15/82. The local had an SD40-2 (#3774) and a GP38-2, a caboose and some grain cars.

I just learned a lot more about this line. Like others I wished I would have spent a little time photographing this line while it was still intact. Didn't know they mostly ran at night, which does explain why there are few photos of train action. My wife and I did stop at Wells in 2006 on our way home from San Antonio. Didn't know the bridge had been removed. I also saw the connecting switch was removed from the old WP.

2006ish sounds about right for when the bridge over the SP main was removed, though it may have been a couple years earlier than that. There used to be one of the old cast concrete bridges with the raised WESTERN PACIFIC lettering over what used to be old Highway 50 at the west end of Wells, not far south of the bridge over the SP, but that together with a lot of the fill on both sides of the highway was removed maybe five years ago now? (Amazing how the years start to run together...).

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

Thanks for the post and comments about the Wells-TwinFalls line ... another historic route to visit! It does look like there are still things to see. ... BTW the BLM also has an interesting back country route that follows the Emigrant/California trail from "Wilkins", about 25 miles N of Wells off US93 (a late 1940-ish trading post/service station long since gone) up to SE ID ... near Oakley ... details and maps available at the Elko BLM office.

Odyssey
Evergreen, CO

JDLX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 2006ish sounds about right for when the bridge
> over the SP main was removed, though it may have
> been a couple years earlier than that. There used
> to be one of the old cast concrete bridges with
> the raised WESTERN PACIFIC lettering over what
> used to be old Highway 50 at the west end of
> Wells, not far south of the bridge over the SP,
> but that together with a lot of the fill on both
> sides of the highway was removed maybe five years
> ago now? (Amazing how the years start to run
> together...).
>
> Jeff Moore
> Elko, NV

Jeff,
Thank you for your always insightful and interesting
comments. We at TO are fortunate to have your informed opinions available to us from the heart of northern Nevada. Thanks very much.
Best, Mike

Posted from iPhone

JDLX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 2006ish sounds about right for when the bridge
> over the SP main was removed, though it may have
> been a couple years earlier than that. There used
> to be one of the old cast concrete bridges with
> the raised WESTERN PACIFIC lettering over what
> used to be old Highway 50 at the west end of
> Wells, not far south of the bridge over the SP,
> but that together with a lot of the fill on both
> sides of the highway was removed maybe five years
> ago now? (Amazing how the years start to run
> together...).
>
> Jeff Moore
> Elko, NV


Highway 40

WAF Wrote:

> Highway 40

Oops...all I can say is that it was late and I was tired.

Thanks for catching that...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

I was on that bootleg trip. Running a former WP Fairmont M-9. On the trip up to Contact we rolled our cars across the newly paved over crossing at Contact. It was fresh asphalt too,.. On the return trip the battery on the motorcar gave out and we lost the ignition. Being the last car of five we coasted down hill for awhile, after dark one of the other cars came out to rescue tow us in. We were still a few miles out of Wells.
I'll have to find those slides and scan them to show.
Vic

I believe Thornton Waite wrote an article about the line for THE STREAMLINER, including early photos. The line was built relatively late in the game and hosted mixed train service until the early-to-mid 1960s if I recall.

As has been mentioned, too bad the trains mostly ran at night. I wonder if there were any exceptions or special passenger movements?

A couple additions...

1. Vic, I've seen Wayne's photographs of the trip...I seem to remember Wayne's speeder running out of fuel on the way back, and he ended up coasting down from around Summer Camp? I know I'd love to see yours as well...

2. I seem to recall a story that the fresh grooves you cut in the pavement of the Highway 93 crossing caused UP some grief, after the state highway department started asking the railroad some pointed questions as to why they were running trains on a line that had been abandoned.

3. I've also heard that when the speeders got to the crossing just below the old barite mill just north of Shores, the road had been built up a foot or more over the top of the rails, and the speeders had to be carried across the road. Somebody at the mill got excited and came down, hoping it meant the road was going to be reopened. I remember hearing one of the people on the trip went to the trouble of putting together a proposal to operate the line from Shores to Wells to haul barite, but UP wouldn't consider anything that would have interchanged the traffic to anyone other than them. The barite mine and mill shut down shortly thereafter...and then about five or so years ago a new company reopened the mines and built a new mill several miles to the west, and they are presently trucking much of their product to the new Elko Railport for loading into railcars.

Side note- at the base of the Snake Range due west of Shores there is an old homestead, originally filed upon by the Schoer family. The Shores station name on this branch is a corrupted spelling of that last name.

4. Wandering through the list of Streamliner back issues on the UPHS website, I see Volume 18 Issue 2 has an article titled "UP Builds 95-mile Idaho-Nevada Line" starting on Page 30. No author is listed.

5. Union Pacific's Fall/Winter timetable (Revised 10 January 1960) shows Wells Branch service as being offered daily by trains 439 (southbound) and 440 (northbound). This train is marked as "Local freight with caboose; hand baggage only". Train 439 departed Twin Falls at 8:00 p.m., arriving in Wells at 1:00 a.m.; Train 440 departed Wells at 2:00 a.m., arriving back at Twin Falls at 7:00 a.m. I want to say passenger service survived well into the 1960s, and I'm not aware of any special passenger excursions ever being offered on this line.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV