[Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner included below]
Here are the first of my photos of C&S steam power being scrapped at Seventh Street yard in Denver in 1960-61. Four locomotives were cut up there during the period from fall 1960 through summer 1961. During that same period, all other C&S steam except
638 and 641 was also disposed of, with several engines sold and cut up in a Cheyenne scrapyard and the others sold and shipped south to Commercial Metals in Houston. In fact, one of the several big shipments headed south from Seventh Street on Jan. 29, 1961,
the same day I photographed the 602 being cut up in another part of the yard.
Of the four cut up in Denver, the last Pacific on the entire Burlington system roster was the first. The 374 had been stored on the same track on which it and the others were cut up since 1956, first as passenger protection power and then simply until rip
track personnel could get around to scrapping it. Once it was certain it would not run again, the bell, whistle, number plate and headlight were removed for sale or donation (as they were from other retired steam power), and I ended up buying the 374's headlight
for $10.40. I also bought the 602's plain cast iron number plate with numbers painted on the flat surface of the plate. This was a C&S casting used on a number of locomotives whose brass number plates had been sacrificed to WWI scrap drives. I'm including
a view of 374 in storage; sister engine 372 was similarly held at Trinidad as passenger protection power until it was clear it would never be used, and it was scrapped by company forces in Trinidad.
Second to be cut up in Denver was the 602, and its scrapping began as soon as 374 was completed, in December 1960, and was finished by the end of January. This work, obviously, was done at a leisurely pace as time permitted rip track employees to do the
work. The locomotives were cut into pieces that could be picked up by a locomotive crane on the adjacent track and loaded into gons for shipment south the CF&I at Pueblo. Cabs were generally removed in one piece, and the 620's cab was sold to the Black Hills
Central at Hill City, S.D., for use in creating a mock-up of a locomotive cab that would let visitors see was it was like to operate a steam locomotive. But I don't believe the project was ever completed, as I never saw a trace of the 620's cab on the BHC
in several visits; I only have my photo of it loaded on a flatcar in Denver for delivery to South Dakota.
The 620, after losing its cab in February 1961, sat untouched through the rest of the winter until conditions improved for this outdoor work, and then its scrapping was actively undertaken and completed in July. But before the 620 was cut up, the 902 was
done, starting in the early spring of 1961 and being completed in June.
It was indeed sad to watch these locomotives, which had served the railroad for so long, being reduced to pieces of scrap metal.
Hol
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Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner | View attachments on the web
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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