October 5, 2015
Archie - Thanks for trying. I guess it's safe to assume that those Q
purchasing/mechanical executives who would have the answers to our questions
have all by now passed over to God's great general office building in the
sky.... Best Regards - Louis
Louis Zadnichek II
Fairhope, AL
In a message dated 10/6/2015 11:19:48 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
CBQ@yahoogroups.com writes:
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
On Oct 4, 2015, at 3:05 PM, LZadnichek@aol.com [CBQ] wrote:
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 per iod 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 c an 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
regula tions 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 Engine ering 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 som e
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. A s 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 N WS&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.&nbs p; 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: LZadnichek@aol.com
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