OK, now that we have the photo issues worked out -- hopefully -- I'll start in on Q steam power leased to the C&S, FW&D and B-RI -- and one other road to which the Q had close ties. I've done another compilation from assignment sheets showing those Q locomotives leased from 1927 to 1954, when the last Q steam engines on the C&S and FW&D were returned to the parent company and sold for scrap. It's interesting to see that the C&S began leasing M-2-As right from the time it got all 10 of the USRA M-3s. And O-2 Mikados, both as-built and as modernized into O-2-As, were also popular on the C&S and FW&D -- the Denver in later years getting O-2-B oil-burners, though. In the case of the O-2s, those converted to burn oil were given a different class to differentiate them, but such was not the case with other classes of Mikados. The entire O-4 group of USRA 2-8-2s were converted to burn oil in the 1920s, and thus there was no particular need to differentiate, but such was not the case with the few O-1-A engines converted to burn oil, nor with the B-1-A Mountains and S-2 and S-3 Pacifics similarly converted. But suffice it to say that all the members of those four classes leased to the FW&D had been converted to burn oil before going to Texas. In the 1930s the Denver did lease a number of coal-burning O-2s, but they operated no farther south than Amarillo.
There were other Q Pacifics on the C&S, and vice versa, as the power on trains 29-30 (and until the late 1920s, trains 31-32) between Denver and Billings was pooled, with locomotives of both roads running all the way through. And the same thing was true on the passenger trains south of Denver, Nos. 1-2 and 7-8; C&S, FW&D and leased Q power ran through on these trains, sometimes between Denver and Amarillo or between Fort Worth and Trinidad, and at various times all the way between Denver and Fort Worth. And on at least one occasion, a Fort Worth & Denver light Pacific (the 504 as I recall) made it all the way up to Billings on 29-30. As a result, on occasion a pair of Q S-3 Pacifics might be serviced at the C&S 7th Street roundhouse in Denver, one of which was leased to the C&S by the Q and the other of which was simply the pooled locomotive used on trains 29-30.
Now for the "other" western road that briefly leased locomotives from the Q. Late in 1942 and all through 1943 the D&RGW found itself extremely short of motive power and reached far afield to obtain additional locomotives. Last year I posted shots of a pair of DM&IR 2-8-8-4 Yellowstones working freights west to Denver over the Q while enroute to the Rio Grande. But during the final months of 1942 and the first half of 1943 the Grande leased five Burlington O-1-As and a single O-2-A. They were used primarily in Denver-Pueblo service over the Joint Line and the attached image depicts Rio Grande C-48 Consolidation 1162 working as a Denver-Palmer Lake helper ahead of Q Mike 4999 on a 69-car freight photographed near Castle Rock, Colo., while on its way to Pueblo on the first day of 1943.
Much more to follow in the days ahead.
Hol
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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