Re: Why was 489 retired in 1962?

Ryan Morris Wrote:
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> The snow fighting probably ended when the refinery
> burned in the mid 60's.

The refinery closed in the end of 1964. The Grande began to shut the RR down in the winter starting in Jan, 1965.

When the Monarch Branch was standard gauged and all the remaining locomotives were sent to Alamosa in 1956, that gave them 22 locomotives. 464 was retired soon after that leaving 21 - including the 3 470's. 18 engines was more than enough to keep trains moving. The engines moved from Salida for the most part had significant flue time left on them. These engines were run until their flue time expired then they were evaluated individually as to whether to overhaul them. Generally, it seems the engines with the poorest running gear/driver tires were set aside. As mentioned in the old thread, 487 seems to have been the last engine to get new tires in 1962. 489's tires had about 24 months of service left in them. Even with a fairly solid boiler, given the declining traffic levels, it made little sense to spend the money on 489, so it was set aside. 482-486-489 all had thin tires.

As to why 494-5 were set aside is not really known as both of them had decent tires. 494 still has decent tires. 495's were real nice. So nice, they went under 484 when it got rebuilt in 1984-5. One crippling issue with 495 might have been the fact that that the #4 driver was out of quarter. A fact we found when we started running 484 with 495's drivers under her. She had a pretty good pound under her that avoided any form of attempted repair. Because of the out of quarter situation, 484 tended to have her #3 and #4 driver axles run hot as well as the crank pins - at least until she was good and broke in (worn out?). 484 got a thorough running gear overhaul in 1991 or so. When we sent the drivers out for turning, the out of quarter situation was discovered. Once that was corrected, 484 ran much much better.