Group, Spoke with Bob Richards about the scrapping of steam and he said they were all gone by the time he got into the high position. As a side note, one of the official's car that he sold was purchased by Sterling Hayden an actor on the silver screen, no relation as far as I know. Archie Hayden
Louis, I will be glad to ask Bob if he has any info on the scrapping of locomotives. I do know he was in charge of disposing of several of the Q heavyweights used as official's cars as he let me copy the bill of sale etc. Archie
October 4, 2015 Hol, Ken, Bill and Group - Thanks to Ken for sharing with us how the GN handed their internal accounting of retired/scrapped equipment through the use of Valuation Engineering Department records. Very interesting. Thankfully, the BN archived the data. Some time ago, Archie in Hannibal told me that he knew a retired Q purchasing department employee who, although frail with age, still had a sharp mind. Perhaps, this person who Archie knows might still be able to give us some further insights on just how the Q went about documenting the retirement and sale for scrap of obsolete locomotives and rolling stock. Archie, could you help us if possible? Does anyone else in this Group know of any still living Q purchasing or mechanical department employees who might shed some additional light on this subject? And, does anyone in BRHS leadership who is on this List know if the BN shared/donated Q equipment disposition records and if so are they a part of today's BRHS Archives? Hol, I agree with you that, as on the GN, during dieselization the Q issued "blanket" AFEs for sales of multiple steam locomotives and other obsolete rolling stock to Northwestern Steel & Wire and competing scrap companies. That would help to explain the discrepancy in dates regarding 1842. Makes sense to me as a former scrap yard buyer since I received sales documents listing multiple railroad freight, passenger and mow cars for demolition from the Frisco, L&N, GM&O, TRRA and private tank car owners under one accounting number tied to an earlier bid. We'd buy one or several cars at a time on a fixed 30 day quote, or quote a fluctuating scrap price based upon a deductible tied to a monthly Iron Age average price that would be good for six months or even a year. Then, the railroad would just send us their cripples and the paperwork would show-up later. Cars (occasionally including some real "dogs" such as asphalt/oil contaminated tank cars and heavy weight coaches that had cement poured floors or even cement ballast in the frames) would then just show-up at our front gate. Asbestos was not a problem in the early 1970s as there were virtually no environmental laws or regulations as there are today. Also, as I now recall, almost never did all of the condemned cars show-up at our interchange at the same time, they usually dribbled-in over a 30 day or so time period from the actual date of sale. As the Frisco was the delivering carrier, there were always some delays with off-line equipment that was in really bad mechanical shape or had been wrecked and had to be patched-up to make their last couple of miles into the scrap yard. It certainly had to be a similar situation with the Q at NWS&W. As for nailing down the actual location of where 1842 was photographed, let me suggest this. There is an active FaceBook Page for NWS&W < https://www.facebook.com/nwsw.info >. Post the image to that page and ask if anyone recognizes the house shown behind the locomotives or can provide any other information on the image. There's no telling what you may find out to share with us all. And, if you scroll to the near bottom of the page, there's an image of a "box car city" erected for employees during WW Two. May be some of our freight car expects can tell us if any of the cars are Q in origin. Bill, thanks for sharing the image of NWS&W 4, ex Q 504, switching the mill. Also in the NWS&W FaceBook Page is a poor quality snapshot showing either the same or a sister Q 0-6-0 at a downtown grade crossing. I looked through some boxes today and did find a couple of prints I took of Q steam being scrapped at NWS&W. I'll scan and post a couple of the better images in the coming week. This has been a very interesting thread to me and I look forward to other's comments as we go along. Best Regards - Louis Louis Zadnichek II Fairhope, AL
Hi Hol and Louis, I've tried to stay out of the discussions on "when was a locomotive actually retired," as I'm not that familiar with CB&Q procedures. However, I am somewhat experienced with Great Northern procedures, and of course the two roads were closely related. Most of my experience comes from tracking GN steam locomotive retirement dates through Burlington Northern's Valuation Engineering department. Tangentially, I eventually got into other types of equipment, primarily just to preserve the records. It is my understanding that the Valuation Engineering department of GN was set up primarily to comply with ICC regulations after ICC completed their valuation of the railroad. While GN's valuation was not actually published until 1927, all of the records indicate that it was actually done in 1915. It is interesting to me that many of the valuation records date to that time (1915), including what are called the "Change Number Record Accounts," (CNRA) which document equipment renumberings and retirements. Thus far I've found several Change Number Record Accounts, which are as follows: Account 51 -- Steam Locomotives Account 53 -- Freight Equipment Account 54 -- Passenger Equipment Account 57 -- Maintenance Equipment The hard copy records for these accounts were kept in the Valuation Engineering offices and were in large loose-leaf books with 11" x 17" pages. Each page contained 50 numbers, e.g. 100-149, 150-199, 200-249. 250-299, etc. Each page had a series of columns on it. These were grouped into four (as I remember it) groups of six columns. Each group of four had a heading of "CHANGED", under which were six columns headed as "From," "Date," "Auth.," "To," "Date," and "Auth." As originally set up the first column contained a star (which looks like it was from a hand stamp) if the piece of equipment was on the roster at the time of the valuation in the first "From" column, the actual date received in the "Date" column, and nothing in the "Auth." column. However, when the piece of equipment was disposed of or renumbered, the new number or "Retired" was added under the "To" column, a date was put in the next appropriate column, and the Authorization for Expenditure (AFE) number was put into the "Auth." column. If the number were reused, the next "From" column would contain the previous number of the piece of equipment, the "Date" column would contain the date renumbered, and the "Auth." column would contain an AFE number authorizing the change. The next three columns would be filled in as described above for the original numbers on each page. In addition to the change number record acconts, the Valuation Engineering office also had copies of all of the AFEs. As you know, an AFE was issued for each locomotive retirement, though it wasn't uncommon, especially in the last days of steam, to have a large number of engines and tenders on the same AFE. This may have been different on the GN than on the CB&Q, because the GN kept separate track of tender numbers, no doubt due to its habit of swapping tenders. Once the AFE had been approved to sell equipment, someone determined to whom it would be sold. In the case of GN it was commonly Duluth Iron & Metal, Paper Calmensen or West End Iron & Metal, though I know the Burlington commonly used Northwest Steel & Wire. Then when the specific pieces of equipment to go to each company were known, a "Sale Order" was issued with all of the equipment to go to each company on the Sale Order. In the AFE records, there would commonly be copies of the Sale Orders, but then the specific days of delivery to each company were also included within each AFE folder. In discussions I had with Burllington Northern personnel during my vists to BN headquarters to review the various documents I was told on several occasions that the date of delivery was considered to be the actual date of sale. Thus there are several dates that could be retirement dates in various records. One would be the date of issuance of the AFE, one would be the date of the Sale Order (which is what is documented in some records), and the last would be the date of delivery to the scrapper or other purchaser. My last visit to BN headquarters was after the BNSF merger had been announced. I was told at that time that all of the hard-copy records (e.g. the change number record account books) were to be sent to the property accounting office in Topeka, KS. BN had started keeping all of their disposition information on a computer system in about the mid-1980s, so the CNRA books' last entries were about that time. I did at least see the CB&Q Freight Car books (though I never had time to really look at them), so presume they were sent to Topeka as well. Since the ICC has since been discontinued, I don't know if the property accounting department would still have the records or not. I believe that all of the Great Northern AFE files in the Valuation Engineering office were donated to the Great Northern Railway Historical Society, and are now located in the GNRHS Archives in the Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul, MN. I don't know if BRHS may have received the Burlington AFEs or if they may have been preserved elsewhere. Should anyone want to try to determine what CB&Q records went to Topeka, I can provide the contact information I was given at the time. I apologize for this long-winded post, but hope it may shed some additonal light (or perhaps confusion) on when the railroad considered a piece of equipment to be "retired." Best regards, ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2015 5:36 PM Subject: RE: [CBQ] Q 1842
Louis: I believe you are right about the photo being at Sterling, but it would be nice to nail it down positively. As for the date discrepancy, I think it's probably greater than two months, as in the August 22 photo the engine already shows the effects of being in scrapyard service for some time -- missing cylinder head cover and beat up sheet metal cylinder jacketing. I only have the January and June 1948 Q locomotive assignment sheets, and in January the 1842 is assigned to the St. Joseph Division, where it had been for some time, but by June it's gone, so it had likely been at the scrapyard for several months by the time its photo was taken on August 22. It's possible that the 1842 was retired under a blanket AFE covering a number of locomotives and that the date someone copied from the records was the date the AFE was completed, that is, all the locomotives retired and sold under its authorization were actually gone. Meaning locomotives retired under that AFE may have been disposed of over a period of several months. Hol
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.comFrom: CBQ@yahoogroups.comDate: Sat, 3 Oct 2015 15:18:59 -0400 Subject: Re: [CBQ] Q 1842 October 3, 2015 Hol - THANKS for sharing this interesting image. For my money, that's an ex-C&NW Class M-2 0-6-0 type behind the ex-Q G-9. That being so, it would indicate that the scrap yard where the image was taken was interchanged by both the Q and C&NW. To the best of my knowledge, that could ONLY be NWS&W in Sterling, IL. Plus, we already know that NWS&W used scrap switchers from both the Q and C&NW on their industrial railroad prior to when the GTW 0-8-0's took over duties. I say the location is NWS&W. As for the discrepancy in dates, we've recently had a similar discussion here about sold for scrap, retired and condemned dates on the roster and what the terms meant. Your guess on the two month discrepancy is as good as mine. I have some images that I took myself in the early 1960s at NWS&W showing Q steam power being cut-up. By that time, the GTW 0-8-0's were handling switching duties. If I can find what box the prints are hid away in, I'll share with the Group. One last thing about your image. It appears that the stacks on both locomotives are capped (covered) meaning may be the mill had been shut down for a strike or other outage. I've always thought that an article in the BRHS Bulletin on how NWS&W scrapped Q steam power, heavy weight passenger cars and other rolling stock would make for interesting reading. Best Regards - Louis [Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner included below]
I just bought this photo on eBay because it depicts on obviously ex-Q G-9 switcher (its Q number, 1842, is visible on the number plate and headlight number board) now numbered 5 and in use at what is identified on the print as "U.S. Steel & Wire Co." The date of the photo is recorded as Aug. 22, 1948. Company records (and thus Corbin's first book) say the locomotive was retired in October 1948. In addition to that discrepancy, there's the question of where this photo was actually taken. There's no location identified on the print, and an exhaustive Google search turns up no U.S. Steel & Wire Co., only the expected U.S. Steel and Northwest Steel & Wire Co.
Does anybody recognize this scene as being Sterling, Ill., and the Northwest Steel & Wire plant? We know the Q sold many steam locomotives to NWS&W in the 1950s, including several G-5 USRA 0-6-0s that became Sterling plant switchers. An d Sterling also used a number of former C&NW and GTW switchers at the plant in the 1950s. That looks a lot like a C&NW 0-6-0 behind the 1842/5. NWS&W began operations at Sterling in 1936 and the Q began selling locomotives for scrap (as opposed to cutting them up itself at Eola or elsewhere) in the years following WWII. So it seems quite probable that retired Q steam locomotives were being sold to NWS&W in the late Forties, and identifying the location of this photo would change the probability into a fact. Of course there's still the discrepancy between the date the Q says the 1842 was retired and the two-month earlier date on which it was photographed . . . Hol
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Posted by: archie hayden <klinerarch@charter.net>
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