Nostalgia & History > WAG Wednesday: Garden City Western revisited

This weeks’ WAG Wednesday will be a re-post of sorts. Back in August of 2011 I posted an early WAG thread on the Garden City Western Ry. Since the original thread is over 7 years old I’m betting there will be many new members getting a first look. Also, since that thread was posted I’ve upgraded from Picasa photo-editing. And I was able to add an image that wasn’t available back then. Part of my Gibson Collection archiving chore was to re-file 100s of Bill’s slides that had been out-of-box for various projects, mainly slide presentations & related publishing projects. So I’m posting an extra roster shot, from a different angle. All 3 shots have gone through a much improved Photoshop re-invigoration, if you will.

The GCW has an interesting history! Here are a couple of paraphrased snippets taken from Wikipedia:

“The Garden City Sugar & Land Company, at Garden City, KS built a railroad known as the Garden City Western Ry, constructed in 1915. This railroad extends from the Sugar Factory at Garden City in a northwesterly direction about fourteen miles through farm lands, held by the Garden City Sugar & Land Company. [The] road [was] built to take care of products of Garden City Sugar & Land Company's holdings in land. The [original] Nebraska, Kansas & Southern Ry track was laid out 12.6 miles from Garden City [but] was never operational. The rail, fastenings and ties from this railroad were sold in 1915 at a Sheriff's auction to the Garden City Western Railway Company, a subsidiary of the Garden City Sugar & Land Company. GCW was purchased by Pioneer Railcorp on April 29, 1999. The primary commodities include grain, frozen beef, fertilizer, farm implements, feed products and utility poles.” (words in brackets are my own added text)

Lifted verbatim from my original thread: An interesting note for you steam fans: GCW #25 is on display in the Lee Richardson Zoo, which is the largest zoological park in Kansas. The engine was affectionately known as "Ol' Two-Bits".

1. & 2. GCW 202 in alternate roster shot views.

3. The 202 at work spotting 2 hoppers.
Three photos taken November 11, 1970 at Quinby, KS by William A. Gibson (WAG) Sr.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Art Gibson (wag216)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/22 02:29 by santafe199.

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Nice Lance. Any idea of the history of 202?

SP4360 Wrote: > ... Any idea of the history of 202?

Personally, no. But I'm sure somebody aboard TO will have some info. In my original thread my late friend John Arbuckle noted that the switchers, along with some other geeps had been sold off quite some time back...

Lance/199

SP4360 Wrote:
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> Nice Lance. Any idea of the history of 202?

According to rrpicturearchive it was built for Chicago Short Line in 1949 as #201. It also appears the paint schemes are almost identical

Here is  a link to the all time roster for the Chicago Short Line
https://www.thedieselshop.us/CSL.HTML

Here is the dispotition from the link above - Garden City Western 202, then to NIS 202, then to Auto Rail Services of Phoenix (JTI20



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/19 12:12 by Spoony81.

I goggled the line today....lots of cars stored on the western end.

Lance,
I remember on a trip out West seeing this loco.
It was across a field from where I was.I started
walking until I found my self in a muddy mess.
Nevertheless got the shot.Where it is now is lost
in my sold collection.

Uncle Joe
Seffner,Fl.