Archive for the ‘Locomotive Notes’ Category
Bamberger Equipment
The pages for Bamberger equipment roster listings have been rearranged, breaking them out as separate pages covering the steam locomotives, the electric cars, and the diesel locomotives.
Bamberger Steam | Bamberger Electric Cars | Bamberger Diesels | Bamberger Railroad
The Bamberger Railroad got its start 1891 as the Great Salt Lake & Hot Springs Railway, building northward from the west side of Salt Lake City, near the Union Pacific depot. The railroad was owned (mostly) by Simon Bamberger, using financial resources from his interests in coal and metal mines. The company completed its line to Becks Hot Springs later in 1891, and continued on to Bountiful in less than a year. Centerville was reached in 1894, and Farmington in 1895. To provide a destination for travelers while the company was recovering financially, Bamberger purchased a swampy area just north of Farmington, drained it and built the Lagoon Resort, for residents of Salt Lake City who sought recreation outside of the city. (Lagoon remains today as one of the largest resort parks in the West.)
Within a year of the completion of the line to Farmington in 1895, Bamberger expanded his vision with plans to extend his Great Salt Lake & Hot Springs line to serve Ogden. Bamberger wanted to provide service for the local business traveler, providing more frequent service than either Union Pacific or Rio Grande, which did not offer conveniently timed passenger service between Ogden and Salt Lake City.
The company was reorganized in October 1896 as the Salt Lake & Ogden Railway. The end of track remained at Lagoon from 1896 through 1902, when construction resumed, with Kaysville as the goal. Kaysville and Layton were reached in 1906, Kaysville on May 30 and Layton on September 4. Construction crews finished the line to Ogden in late July 1908, with passenger service between Salt Lake City and Ogden beginning on August 8, 1908. The depot was located at 31st Street and Lincoln Avenue.
Although the Salt Lake & Ogden Railway was powered by large steam locomotives, it was still known as “the Dummy Line” because of its 1890s start with dummy streetcars, small steam locomotives that were built with bodies that resembled regular electric streetcars. As service was expanded to points north, and to Ogden, the company purchased larger steam locomotives and larger cars with capacity to move the increased freight and passenger traffic.
With the completion of the line in 1908, Bamberger began giving thought to joining the wave of interurban railroads (railroads that inter-connect large urban areas) that were modernizing their lines by electrifying them, using electric power to replace steam locomotives. The Salt Lake & Ogden Railway seemingly had all the requirements for a profitable interurban railroad: large cities at either end of the line (with large central city terminals) to provide both passengers and freight; a prosperous rural countryside between to supply more of both; and a well-engineered route that would allow operation of high-speed, electric interurban trains. In 1910, the electrification was completed by stringing overhead trolley wire and purchasing new equipment, along with constructing electrical substations along the line. Since Bamberger also owned several coal mines, it seemed proper to also construct a coal-fired power plant, and one was built at Farmington to furnish all of the electricity needed for the railroad. The first day of electric operation was May 28, 1910.
Throughout its early years, the Salt Lake & Ogden Railway was known as “the Bamberger.” In August 1917, the name was changed officially to the Bamberger Electric Railroad, accepting the road’s nickname. Also in 1917, Simon Bamberger was elected governor as the Progressive Party candidate.
Most of the freight traffic was to and from local businesses along the line between Salt Lake City and Ogden, with Bamberger interchanging traffic with the larger interstate companies at either end of the line. During the 1920s, publically-funded highways slowly expanded, providing trucking companies access to these same local businesses. Bamberger, with its privately owned right of way and tracks, was forced to compete with trucking companies for freight, and bus companies for passengers, all of which used the public highways.
Due to declining business, Bamberger Electric Railroad declared bankruptcy in 1933, emerging in 1939 as the reorganized Bamberger Railroad, dropping the word “Electric” from its name. During the 1939 reorganization, Bamberger owned 84 freight cars, four freight locomotives, 29 passenger cars, two express cars, a line work car, and two highway buses. To better compete for the local passengers, in March 1939 the company purchased five high-speed, streamlined cars that were capable of 75 miles per hour.
Like so many other railroads and businesses in the nation, Bamberger’s bottom line benefitted by the movement of freight and passengers during World War II, but its fortunes went into decline after the war. By the very early 1950s, the company was again struggling to keep red ink away from its account books. After the war, Bamberger had increased its efforts to convert its passenger business from rail cars to buses. By mid 1952, with new buses traveling daily between Salt Lake City and Ogden, regulators allowed the company to end the operation of its passenger trains. The last day was September 6, 1952.
Bamberger Railroad continued as a freight-only company until all operations came to an end on December 31, 1958. Remnants of the line are evident today in many of the towns it served, with the spur between Ogden and Hill Air Force Base, purchased by Union Pacific, remaining as the only part still seeing regular rail operations.
Diesel Traction in U.S.A.
I’ve been thinning out much of the stuff that has accumulated amongst the piles and files over the past 30 years, and ran across this article from 1961 about the history of diesel locomotives in the U.S.
It is in the form of a 16-page article in the March 1961 issue of the British magazine “Diesel Railway Traction.” This was scanned from a chemical photocopy of the article that I’ve had for many, many years. The photocopy was reversed, with white letters on a black background. The file is an 8MB PDF. Here is the direct link:
I’ve added it to the Locomotive Notes Index Page at UtahRails.net:
A lot of this “thinning out” stems from methodically searching for anything about Bingham Canyon and its railroads, the subject of a soon-to-be available book from Arcadia. I found lots of items that I’ve been going to do something with, some day. Time to get to work.
