As I was beginning analysis of the wine carrying cars in the UP Frt Conductor's Book, I decided that I would sample some of the contents of said cars. This, unfortunately, led me to send a message regarding the UP H-70-1 hopper.....what has this to do with wine carrying cars? I have no idea.........to the Steam Loco Group instead of the STMFC. I now include that message below. For those receiving this message twice, I apologize, but it's Richard's fault. Having witnessed first hand the effects of Richard's wine tasting clinic at the San Jose Convention......wife Georgia was grinning for hours afterward...as was Richard, the only one smiling during a Santa Fe modeler's meeting afterwards......I have come to appreciate such activities.
Tim O'Connor speculates that when the UP acquired its H-70-1 hoppers that the population of off road...including eastern owned hoppers....might have vanished to be replaced by the UP hoppers. I actually doubt this happened. All but one of my examples came from the east and were traveling to, apparently, Ogden. Some of these cars...the Lehigh Valley, for example.......were probably carrying coal from some distance and we might expect it to have unique properties. This has been proposed many times. Add to this the fact that we do have photo evidence of eastern hoppers long after 1949 on UP tracks in Wyoming. The book The History of the Union Pacific in Cheyenne shows a Lackawanna hopper headed east...apparently empty....on Sherman Hill in 1955. The Iron Horse and I shows a MP hopper in Laramie in 1951. There is a shot of a Virginian hopper headed west in Kansas. I think we'll find that most of those H-70-1s were used for hauling Wyoming coal from Hanna and Rock Springs to various destinations rather than to haul some unique coal from the east. Of course, there was a coal strike in the Wyoming mines at sometime in the early 50s which might account for the presence of the MP hopper seen in the photo.
Mike Brock
