As you can see by my post count I am quite a junior contributor to the message board community here, so I am hoping that this post is appropriate to the forum.
I’ve been keeping a life journal since my teens which I still add to regularly, and below is a past entry I came across that I thought y’all may get a kick out of. The creation and journal entry date was 1992, though the events of the story happened in… I’m guessing around 1967 or so. I am now 61.
Intro: My father was an engineer for the Union Pacific from post-war 40’s thru 1969. He began his career in Challengers and Big Boys on the Wasatch run between Ogden, Utah and Green River, Wyoming, and died (at age 50) just as the UP 6900 series locomotives (DD40AX) were being rolled out. He also served as a Union Pacific liaison with the BLE
When the story took place I was only around 12 years old, so my specific nomenclature description memories may not be prefect; hence, I am hoping that someone(s) here can enlighten or steer me toward more information on the particular locomotive model at issue since I cannot seem to find much on them today. Secondly, feel free to muse and comment on how the times have changed, since any crew member who dare take (sneak) their kid onboard mainline locomotives as often as my dad did with me (both freight and passenger) would today not only lose their job and credentials, but probably face some sort of nanny-type criminal prosecution as well. Sure makes me glad that I grew up when I did. Hope you like the story.
BaltACD… yep, that’s the one. Thank you for posting the picture. It was so far back in memory that I don’t remember it being that long and solid-sided of a unit. Maybe that’s why it was catching and reacting to so much high crosswind on the morning when I rode on it. What I do remember for sure is the that old man and others on his route absolutely hated it (for whatever reasons) and wished it gone… though perhaps my story gave it less credit than it deserves as maybe it performed better on other routes. Thanks again for posting the picture!
CSSHEGEWISCH… yes, after researching the designation number you mentioned, the U50 is indeed the unit in question. I have read up on it a bit and found that the SP was not much satisfied with their three U50s and largely kept them sidelined, but that the UP had twenty-three of them and were probably hence compelled to make more consistent use. Thanks for the info!
And in looking at the picture of the locomotive it should have been named the BB+BB 50 - as their appear to be two 4 axle trucks under each end of the carbody.
I could look it up, but off the top of my head, the U50 with the four B trucks was the U50B. Some later versions had two C trucks - and thus came the U50C
If memory serves me correctly, the B trucks may have come from ALCO’s.
The four-trucked B+B-B+B units were simply U50s and had trucks reused from UP GTELs. This supply ran out and GE used C-C trucks for the U50Cs. Neither class was completely succesful.
