There is an active topic up on General Discussion concerning Cab-forwards. These were developed for service on The Hill but they seem to have gone pretty far afield from that theater. I know that the 4-6-6-2s finished out their lives in freight service up in Oregon. I have seen photos of ACs taken at Dunsmuir far up the Sacramento River Canyon, in {i]The Valley[/i] and over Tehachapi, and I remember one photo was identified as having been exposed on the San Gorgonio hill; the primary direction of this inquiry is just how far east did these birds go?
I was stationed at Minter Field, U.S. Army Air Corps, in Bakersfield, CA during the summer of 1945. The cab forwards regularly plied the trackage to and from Tehachapi at that time.
John Signor’s new book, “Southern Pacific’s Salt Lake Division” from Signature Press, offers insights on Cab Forward operations into Nevada from the perspective of the northern part of the SP, including the Overland Route. Two operations are of significance to the post-WWII era: the Overland Route Main Line (Reno (Sparks) to Ogden) and the Modoc Line (Klamath Falls, OR, to Fernley, NV). John Signor notes in a caption for a pair of Al Phelps photos from the thirties showing AC-1’s at Wells, NV, that cab forward operations were rare so far east and mostly date from the thirites. Otherwise, on the main line, cab forwards stayed west of Imlay (west of Winnemuca where the WP joined the SP across Nevada). The Modoc Line was a major user of cab forwards and even the cab-in-rear AC-9’s well into the 1950’s. The Modoc was sort of a last stand of articulated steam on the SP.
Based on the above, one should peg routine post-war cab forward operations as west of Imlay, NV. A quick check of the map will show that Beaumont Hill out of the Los Angeles Basin is east of these Nevada locations. One should find routine cab forward operations out of Palm Springs and Indio, perhaps even as far as Yuma. Photo coverage in Arizona gets sparser, though Bob Knoll’s book from the SP Historical and Technical Society might show something on the Sunset Route. So the search goes on…
BigRusty, in my recent PM to you I failed to recognize and extend my gratitude for your response to my inquiry; I would like to do that now and beg your indulgence on my absence of manners.
Beaver14, I thank you for your insightful information regarding Cab-forward operations on the Overland Route; to be perfectly honest I had completely overlooked the Overland Route as being east of California, a somewhat hairbrained omission on my behalf. I will admit that when I posted this topic I was thinking in terms of the Sunset Route.
There was a topic a while back about AC-9s; I was aware that this Class had finished out its active days on the Modoc line but what I had not been aware of was that the company had converted them to be oil burners when they were being bumped off of the El Paso - Tucumcari line by diesels in the early '50s.
My interest in this topic is strictly academic although I will have to admit that, if I were to have to make a decision on the issue, I would probably purchase a Cab-forward before I would purchase a Big Boy.
RT–
There’s a really good book on the locos called THOSE AMAZING CAB FORWARDS by George Harlan, that came out in 1983. I don’t know if it’s still in print, but it was evidently self-published by Harlan, whose address is listed as 180 Via Lerida in Greenbrae, CA, 94904. It contains just about everything you’d want to know about their history and their territory. It looks as if about the ONLY place they didn’t run on the SP was the Siskiyou line between Weed, CA and Eugene, OR, because the super-stiff 3.6% grade on Siskiyou summit wreaked havoc on the tables in their water systems and caused a boiler explosion in one, after which they were barred from the Siskiyou line. But they were pretty much used on almost all of SP’s lines, eventually, especially during WWII where they turned up as far east as Tucson, and as far west as SP’s Coast Route between LA and San Francisco. Though originally built for service between Roseville CA and Sparks NV on the Donner Pass line (or as we locals refer to it: “The Hill”), they eventually ended up pretty much system-wide, except possibly for the T&NO lines in Texas and Louisiana. But out here on the West Coast, you could see them just about ANYWHERE, lugging over the Sierras, Cascades and Tehachapi’s, or running flat out up and down the California Central Valley (the AC4 and up had a top speed of 70mph, and could DO it!).
Incredibly versatile locos, they had a very wide range on the SP. Covered a heck of a lot more territory than UP’s much-vaunted Big Boys.
Tom
At the end of cab-forward operations, they were centered around the Modoc Line (up and down track grades), the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Sacramento/San Joaquin valleys in central California (mostly gradeless). Diesels had bumped them from “Hill” operations, their original reason for existence.
Mark