Nostalgia & History > 80s SP slug set

Steaming in the hot, high summer sun in SP's Miller Yard in south Dallas in 1987 is this slug set. Not sure what it was made from or how it was used, but I saw it and photographed it. Anyone know anything about SP's slugs back in the day? JG

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http://espee.railfan.net/sptebu.html

Built from an ex-UP U25B. Dynamic brake equipped and also equipped to transfer fuel to the "mother" units.
Used on the Rock Trains in Texas. Most were used in the Tucson, AZ area on Copper Ore trains. Some used in Oregon on the branches too.

SP used indentical mother/mate sets on the train that ran the line to Toledo, Oregon from Eugene.  GP40 mothers and the same 16xx series slugs, late 80s to the 1993 when Willamette & Pacific took over.  They also used SD9 and GP9s on this run but preferred 4-axle units due to the 320 or so curves from Albany to Toledo.

Between 1984 and 1989 I worked the engineers extra board out of Tucson, Arizona. I have worked these slug sets with the GP40-2's on
just about every local that they could be assigned too. My experience with them was problematic as maybe half the time the TEBU was
down due to "Traction motor blower failure". With that scenario you were now dragging around the weight of the TEBU (277,000 lbs?).
When the TEBU unit was working however they were a pretty strong set of power to work some pretty heavy locals!