All-
Another NPR report today on oil companies moving oil by rail as
they can't get the Keystone XL pipe line built had me thinking about the NP's
dedicated oil trains to support the war in the Pacific during WWII. Does
anyone know the details (or has an article been written) on dedicated oil
trains on the Q during WWII? Presume FWD-KC-Laurel, but anything is
possible.
As an addendum to the above, the NP's tank car fleet was just
about nil in 1940 (just a handful for company service). Does anyone know how
many tank cars the Q rostered in 1940 and then in 1945? With the War
Production Board clamping down on who got what for the duration, I would like
to know if they allocated any materials for tank car construction (as tankers
were quickly taken up in war service and withdrawn from coastal/Gulf public
trade).
RSVP
John Phillips
Seattle
"I will put down the
informal history of the shirt-sleeve multitude," says Inez Mischitz. "What
they had to say about their jobs, love affairs, vittles, sprees, scrapes and
and sorrows. The oral history is a great hodgepodge and kitchen midden of
hearsay. A repository of jabber. An omnium-gatherum of bushwah, gab, palaver,
hogwash, flap-doodle and malarkey. The fruit of more than 20,000
conversations. What people say is history, what we used to think was history,
is only formal history, and largely false. I will put down the informal
history or I will perish in the attempt."