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Re: [CBQ] Scrapping C&S Steam Power

To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Scrapping C&S Steam Power
From: "Jpslhedgpeth@aol.com [CBQ]" <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2015 23:13:34 -0500
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In my growing up years our clotheslines (remember those) as well as my grandparent's clothes lline were supported by posts made of scrap boiler flues.

Pete


-----Original Message-----
From: LZadnichek@aol.com [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Nov 3, 2015 4:37 pm
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Scrapping C&S Steam Power

 
November 3, 2015
 
Hol - Finally working my way chronologically down saved Emails from last week, so have now arrived at your excellent images of C&S steam power being scrapped at the 7th Street Yard in Denver. This was a real, as we would say in the Deep South, "shade tree" operation. Absolutely no doubt it was a make work situation for rip track laborers when they didn't have anything more productive to do at the time.
 
A couple of images caught my eye. Like Pete says, lots of asbestos boiler lagging was exposed. In those days, asbestos was not considered dangerous and it was laying around on the ground or blowing in the wind at any scrap yard or location where insulated boilers and piping were being cut-up.
 
Another image shows that the C&S was saving cut boiler flues for later use as fence posts, railings or pipe. You can see that flues were being cut free at the front and back of the boiler and then rolled down two angled flues onto a flat car. This was not at all unusual as in my scrap yard days we did more-or-less the same with ship boilers that the burners first split in two. There were always active buyers for the cut flues and I suspect they found a myriad of uses afterwards.
 
The images that really "got" me were the ones of the locomotive "chunks" dumped into the gondola. The steel mill had to been buying the cut-up locomotives as "Unprepared No. 1," or, as we termed it, "Torch Material." There is relatively little weight loaded into the gon as it would "cube out" with the big chunks long before reaching its maximum tonnage. Very wasteful.... But, since the C&S was absorbing the transportation cost to the mill and the labor cost was probably exceeding the value of the scrap, it really didn't matter. Still, I cringe to this day whenever I see a car (or river hopper barge for that much) not loaded to its full capacity.
 
I suppose the inefficiency and cost of cutting-up their own steam power lead the C&S to bidding out the remaining locomotives and subsequently shipping them all the way south to Houston, TX, where Commercial Metals finished the job. Do you have any images of that final funeral train on the C&S or FW&D in route to Houston? I imagine the mechanical and operating departments of both railroads breathed a BIG sign of relief when the last tender disappeared behind the gates to the scrap yard. Many thanks for sharing these images. Best Regards - Louis
 
Louis Zadnichek II
Fairhope, AL 
 
In a message dated 10/26/2015 8:48:40 P.M. Central Standard Time, CBQ@yahoogroups.com writes:


Lots of asbestos boiler lagging exposed...Couldn't do it that way today.

Pete


-----Original Message-----
From: Hol Wagner holpennywagner@msn.com [CBQ] <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
To: CB&Q Group <cbq@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Oct 26, 2015 4:31 pm
Subject: [CBQ] Scrapping C&S Steam Power [9 Attachments]

 
[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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Posted by: jpslhedgpeth@aol.com



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