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