DRGW D&RGW/UP Joint Kaiser Coal Train

Now that Athearn has produced the nice reworked MDC Thrall Gons in the UP paint scheme and side ribs added, I've acquired so far four 5-packs toward modeling this train. Next year Athearn should ship the D&RGW paint version of the car with the "Coal Liner" logo to complete the coal cars.

I've also got KATO SD45's including the D&RGW and UP units for the head end. All that is left is a correct caboose and I've got a correct train from head to tail. I assume the Centralia Car Shops UP Caboose would be correct but there are numerous paint scheme with safety logos etc. Is there any from that line up which is correct for this train?

 

I believe that D&RGW cabooses were used from Sunnyside to Roper.

 

> http://www.utahrails.net/articles/up-sd45s.php

from the website.
Kaiser Unit Coal Train Service

During mid 1968, UP negotiated an agreement, along with D&RGW and AT&SF, with Kaiser Steel to operate what was to be one of the nation's first unit coal trains. To serve as motive power for this new train, UP regeared seven SD45s from their as-delivered 59:18 ratio to the lower speed 62:15 ratio, giving the units more lugging power and a lower maximum speed of 75 mph.

UP initially supplied six units to the pool, plus a spare, and D&RGW supplied three units. UP's units were 3643-3649 and D&RGW's units were 5336-5338. By January 1971, the number of trains was increased with added traffic from the loading point at Carbondale, Colo. (the mine itself was 17 miles away), and the number of units dedicated to this service rose to nine units, UP 3641-3649. In June 1971, with the expansion of service, and the delivery of 100 additional Coal Liner cars in 1970, three additional units, UP 3638-3640, were added to the Kaiser pool, as were three more D&RGW units, 5326-5328.

The ratio of twelve UP units to six D&RGW units reflected the two to one ratio of operations between UP and D&RGW, based on mileage. UP also furnished a majority of the "Coal Liner" cars for the new, dedicated service. The trains operated every four days from late 1968 to early 1983, when the Kaiser steel plant quit making steel and became a rolling mill.

The Rio Grande locomotives were leased for actual operation to UP, and to help them stand out among UP units, were among the first D&RGW to incorporate the new large "Rio Grande" logo. The D&RGW units weighed 389,400 pounds in operating condition, while UP's units weighed 393, 300 pounds. Although UP only used Coded Cab Signals on its Wyoming mainline, the D&RGW engines also had cab signal equipment installed so they could run in the lead position in UP territory.

The Kaiser trains first ran in 1968, as one of the first examples of unit trains in the west, a service involving a dedicated set of new equipment and motive power. The service was planned to bring metallurgical quality coal from mines at Sunnyside, Utah, and the Carbondale loadout to the Kaiser Steel mill in Fontana, Calif. Coal was first moved over this route to the Kaiser plant starting in 1942. The Fontana steel plant had been constructed to support the need for plate steel to build the nation's Liberty ships during World War II. Kaiser had purchased the Sunnyside mine at that time (and expanded its Utah operations even more in 1950 when it purchased Utah Fuel Co., the former Rio Grande coal subsidiary), and moving coal from Utah and Colorado to California was a major source of traffic over UP's historic Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. Before the operation of these first unit trains in 1968, coal for Kaiser's Fontana steel mill had been moved as regular westbound traffic in standard UP hoppers, and in UP and D&RGW GS gondolas.

During the first months of Kaiser unit train operation, the train ran with leased red MKT 100-ton hoppers until Union Pacific received the first of two orders of "Coal Liner" rotary-dump gondola cars. The initial 95 Coal Liner cars were delivered to UP as its G-125-1 class cars in March 1969. D&RGW received five very similar cars, which were placed in the same pool as its contribution to the service. In 1970, UP received 100 additional cars, classed in the G-125-2 class. This second series had a slightly lower capacity, and were four inches lower in height.

To publicize the new unit train service, in mid-June 1969, a new high capacity loading facility at Sunnyside was dedicated by the presidents of Kaiser Steel Corporation, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, Union Pacific Railroad, and AT&SF Railway, along with Utah's governor. A photo on the cover of a Coal Age magazine of the same time period showed the train with D&RGW and UP SD45s as motive power, with a large banner declaring "Utah Coal means Utah Jobs" on the side of the lead unit, D&RGW 5337. Right behind 5337 in the photo was D&RGW 5336, along with UP 3645 and another UP SD45.

The production of Kaiser's Sunnyside mine, as much as 5,500 tons per day, was matched to the steel mill's capacity of two 11,000-ton unit trains. The mine loaded an 8,400-ton train every other day, and each train ran on a four-day cycle. Presumably, if Kaiser had wanted more Sunnyside coal, they could have increased production at the mine and added another trainset. The loader, actually a tunnel under a man-made 10-foot deep fill, could load up to 11,943 tons per hour, but the average loading time to fill the 80-car train was 51 minutes. Above the tunnel loader was a 120 foot high, 400-foot diameter coal pile, holding an average of 35,000 to 40,000 tons of coal, with a maximum capacity of 70,000 tons. The coal pile was fed by a conveyor belt from the mine's preparation plant, about a quarter mile away. Upon arrival at the mine, the empty train backed all the way through the 456 foot long tunnel, with the motive power disappearing completely inside the tunnel. With the train's first car directly under the loader, at the tunnel's mid point, the loading cycle started, moving back out of the tunnel at 0.9 mph. The new facility, said to have cost Kaiser Steel $1.2 million, was used to load an 80-car, 8,400 ton Coal Liner unit train every four days, on a 96 hour roundtrip schedule. The entire 1,600 mile roundtrip took place over D&RGW, UP, and AT&SF, to the Fontana mill. In actual practice, the coal was moved in two separate trains, one 65-car train originating in Colorado and the other 80-car train originating in Utah.

The Kaiser unit coal trains, known by railroaders simply as the "K-Trains," operated over D&RGW tracks from Carbondale and Sunnyside to an interchange with UP at Provo, Utah. From Provo, the trains operated over UP trackage to Barstow, Calif., where they were interchanged with Santa Fe for the final miles down Cajon Pass to Kaiser's steel mill at Fontana. Part of the route over UP included descent down two of the most difficult grades in the western states: the 2.2 percent descending grade on Cima Hill from Nevada into California, and the 3.0 percent descending grade on Cajon Pass into the Los Angeles Basin. The severe nature of these two grades required UP to set retainers to safely control these heavy Kaiser unit coal trains. To reduce the time normally required to manually set retainers manually at the top, and manually release retainers at the bottom of these two hills - an hour or more at each instance - UP and D&RGW equipped the locomotives and cars assigned to Kaiser service with remote controls. which allowed the engineer to set retainers from the cab.

At times, due to the 12 hour unloading period, Santa Fe often made use of the locomotives for a freight run to Barstow. While other cabooses were regularly used, UP assigned at least four cabooses that had been modified to operate over all three railroads to this dedicated service. These four cabooses were designated for this special service by a large green K on their cupolas.

 

Hemi,
I watched one of these monster trains come down Cajon back in the fall of 1976. There were 2 Santa Fe geeps behind the caboose and I imagine they were there for added braking ability. Do not know if this was normal or just a rare happening.

 

Which UP caboose?

As I understand the Utah Rails article, it seems that UP cabooses could indeed be seen on the K while it traversed Rio Grande rails, so I'd like to repeat the original question - which UP caboose model (N scale) would be a good choice?

Best wishes
Bryan

 

yes the intermountain's are correct.

 

Yes, but which? Intermountain has many with safety logo's, and some which are plain yellow. I have some slide copies by Steve Sequine and one or two may have a picture of a UP caboose. I'll have to see if there is any info there.

BTW, what happened to the UP and D&RGW Coal liner cars after the Kaiser coal train terminated in 1983. I thought the train ran much longer than that.

BTW, TPWMAN,

That is the most comprehensive explanation of the Kaiser Coal train I have ever seen. Awesome!