Did “Gramps” tank cars get further west than Salt Lake City much? (standard gauge). Did they get to Calif.via WP, etc.?
A GN old timer told me that he was pretty sure he saw a few in Seattle in the 40’s but I haven’t been able to find anything online. Mostly in Colorado only. UTLX (parent co.) so wondered if they got to the Left Coast much.
Thanks
Jim
The Gramps tank cars were used to deliver oil from a loading facility in Chama, NM to a refinery at Alamosa, CO via the D&RGW narrow gauge. Both the oil field and small refinery were owned by “Gramps” Lafayette Hughes, hence the lettering specific to cars in this service. They were in use from about 1939 (four years after the discovery of the oil field west of Chama) until 1964 (when the refinery was shut down after being damaged by a fire). There’s some information and photos here that may be of interest http://teamtrack.xooit.com/t530-On3-GRAMPS-Tank-Cars.htm .
Although the UTLX frameless cars were converted to narrow gauge from standard gauge, they didn;t receive the Gramps lettering until they were in narrow gauge service. No cars with this lettering were known to have been used on the standard gauge, and thus wouldn’t have been seen on any train in Seattle, at least not in actual use (scrap load maybe?).
Thank you Rob. Thanks also for the link. I wasn’t familiar with teamtrack and will enjoy exploring it!
I hadn’t realized that there were no standard gauge “Gramps” cars.
I suppose if my “old timer” (the fellow I bought my house from), who was a GN conductor must have seen the “Gramps” tank cars on a scrap train right after WWII. Otherwise from what I’d read, it didn’t seem very likely. He told me he’d noticed them and that they were in a train at Argo Yard (Seattle) but after all those years he might have simply remembered them being ON the train. He hadn’t been familiar with the “Gramps” brand name and told me he got a kick out of it-is all I remember now, 20 yrs. later.
By the way, I"ve been a fan of your modeling for many years. Some of your work has inspired my’efforts as I build my Ops oriented layout.
I appreciate the education and reply,
Jim
Jim,
Some of the Gramps cars were sold to the WP&Y after the oil shipments on the Rio Grande ended. A number of them (four, maybe more?) were repatriated to the C&TS about 10 years ago. My guess is those were the cars that you heard about.
So some of them did make it to the West Coast - even beyond and back! - as freight, but not hauling revenue.
Some info on recent efforts to restore these cars is in this thread at NGDF:
http://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,223388
There were some other tank cars that did not go to Alaska but off the property and are now also on the C&TS now. I can’t keep up with everything, but more info should be available if needed.
The WP&Y had some tank cars that were formerly UTLX cars that served on the D&RGW. These were not necessarily the cars that carried Gramps lettering (many cars in the Chama-Alamosa service didn’t), but some had the same type of tank body. A good rundown can be found here http://www.whitepassfan.net/whitepass/rolling-stock/freight-cars/tank-car/index.html , and there’s more here http://www.p-b-l.com/Rolling-Stock/R-16-h.html.
mlehman and Rob, thanks. I’ve read that the WP&Y received their cars in 1961-2 and my GN guy’s story was from the mid to late '40s so If he was was remembering accurately (he seemed to be on the ball memory wise) I’m guess it or they must have been in a scrap steel shipment maybe on a flat car…?
He had photos “somewhere” he was going to dig out but he passed away before we got that far, unfortunately. He told me that, as a rookie brakeman, he’d made one of the lst tips through the “new” Cascade tunnel. I would have loved to have seen THOSE photos too.
20 yrs. ago he gave me his engine numbers and if I could only find those I might be able to tie chronologytogether better. It was amazing that he could rattle off every steam loco cab number he ever had pulling a train but he could. I was able to verify a few of them chronologically but have no idea where that slip of paper has gone to. Maybe once I get further along with the layout it’ll turn up in some stack or other.
Capt. G,
The mid-40s sounded pretty early to me, as I had a vague memory they were a postwar thing on the Rio Grande, but I found a pic of a tank car in the full GRAMPS lettering that is dated 1940. So it’s possible that some of the Gramps cars were sent to Alaska with the other requisitioned equipment that was shipped north from Colorado during WWII by the Army. This would’ve been separate and apart for the arrangement that the WP&Y made later in the 1960s to bring more tank cars up to Skagway after the Gramps traffic was discontinued on the Rio Grande in the early 1960s.
Contemporary MOW tanker on the White Pass. It’s history is unknown to me.
The link I posted above has information on this car. Click through to the history of the cars in series 50-65, then scroll down to the link for “complete list of the cars.” Number 53 history is shown as follows:
| Number | ex. Nr. | Weight: | Capacity | Built: | Modified | Aquired | Remarks |
|---|
| 53 | ex. UTLX #12838, #11019 | 35,400 | 6500 Gal. |
|---|
Hmmm, ex-gon for the frame? Looks like it’s one of the old C&S steel underframes, still living on into a second century of service.[8D][Y]