Curt,

Many of those government gons were in USS pool service running between Geneva, Utah (on the D&RGW) and Pittsburg, California (on the Sacramento Northern), with the WP handling them between Roper and Sacramento. When the government yanked them back, it caused a major crisis for the WP, D&RGW and USS. The WP was already chronically short of gons, even with the delivery of the 6501-6600 (Proto 2000 model). A lot of WP's wooden GS gons were pressed into steel service, which pretty much battered them to pieces. D&RGW steel GS gons were also used extensively. It was several years before the WP and D&RGW work their way out of the crisis, and traffic continued to expand for many years.

I have some web pages on this service if you are interested:

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ggg9y/gon.html and http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ggg9y/steel.html .

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff





Curt Fortenberry wrote: