[Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner included below]
I picked up the attached image of Q R-4 Prairie 1958 a couple of weeks ago on eBay and Rupert and I have been trying to figure out just what it depicts ever since, with no real luck. The scene is most likely Newcastle, Wyo., about 1910, as the original print is identified on the rear only as "Newcastle - Cambria." It's obvious that the photo was not taken at the coal mines at the end of the Cambria Branch out of Newcastle, as it appears to be at an engine terminal. Newcastle had a roundhouse and engine servicing facility in the early years of the 20th century. The oldest Lines West locomotive assignment sheet I have, however, is for September 1914 and shows the 1958 assigned to the Omaha Division, though assignments changed frequently.
At any rate, the interesting elements of the photo are the cars, not the locomotive. First, the car coupled to the 1958. This one matches nothing in the 1912 freight car diagram book, and the fact that it has no visible lettering or numbers anywhere lends credence to our theory that it is a flatcar with locally added sides and ends and is used strictly in the yard for moving materials from one place to another -- cinders, gravel, ballast, whatever.
The little cars up on the trestle are another matter entirely. At first glance there appear to be three side dump cars, but closer examination shows that there are actually at least 10 small four-wheel cars with a dump door on the forward end. Their wheels are at right angles to the length of the trestle and the track below, where they appear to be dumping cinders into the car ahead of 1958. There are curved wheel stops on the trestle to keep the cars from rolling over the edge. But there is no visible ramp or track on the other side of the trestle up which these cars could have been pulled or pushed. How did they get to the top of the trestle? And what are they being used for? Our best guess is cinders from the locomotive cinder pit, but that's an awful lot of cars for a facility the size of Newcastle's. The little cars are of two different types, and the two "ends" (actually sides) that are visible carry CB&Q initials but no numbers.
Has any member of the group seen anything like this anywhere, or does anyone have a better idea as to what we're looking at here?
I'm also attaching an April 1919 view of the depot, coal chute and yard at Newcastle, taken from atop a building or smokestack in the area where the locomotive servicing facilities are located. Unfortunately, it looks the wrong direction to verify the existence at Newcastle of the mysterious trestle. But the lone gondola on the short spur at lower right, while not the car coupled to the 1958 in the other photo, does lend credence to the idea that a car was based at Newcastle for moving cinders and other materials.
Amazing the previously unknown things that continue to turn up 100 and more years after the fact!
Hol
__._,_.___
Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner | View attachments on the web
2 of 2 Photo(s)
Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
![]()
__,_._,___
|