Thought I would share pages from my Uintah Railway conductors report, as to get any feedback on things that I might be missing. this is one of my most prized pieces of data from the Uintah, as it give actual train movements and ohter details, I could only wish to find a whole bunch of these little booklets someday in a museum or library - just so much good info. It took me quite a while to figure out the basics of what was being shown on these pages, and I've pretty well got most of them figured out. I would appriciate any feedback from you real railroaders and other historians and railfans on any patterns or things that you think I might have missed.
This is the first entry in the little booklet, dated March 16, 1928 (this was a Friday). The booklet has printed on the front cover "Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Co., Rio Grande SOuthern Railroad Co.", so the Uintah must have purchased them second hand, or as extras from the RGS, or the publisher of the booklets.
Very top edge shows the time of day when the train crew got together and "untied" the train, and when they "tied it up", in this case 6:45 (AM) to 7:15 (PM). I do not know why there is a ten minute variation in both numbers? (IE. 6:45 - 6:55) as there is this same annotation for the time period that the train left and arrived on each of th following days also, all are from five to fifteen minutes in length? Maybe this was the time from when the crew took the train over from the hostler to the time it actually left, and vis versa, the time from when it arrived to the time that it was given back over to the next crew or hostler?
The annotation on the top edge at the far right was a running log of what must have been this conductors payroll, as it always is in decimal form, is added to every day, increase with the number of hours/ runs taken during the day, and starts again at 0 on the first day of the month. On this day it looks as if it is $12.40 ($ sign is never printed anywhere). This "12.40" comes from another annotation on the far right towards teh bottom, 680 + 500 + 60 / 12.40. It seems that there were two "runs" or "trains" for this crew this day and he was paid for each, one being $6.80 and the other $5.00, don't know what eh extra $.60 was for..... I do not know if this was a standard payment for one conductor in this time period for a days work, Always assumed he was just keeping track of his payroll, could it be for the whole crew???
The engine for this day (and all the others in this booklet) was the famous articulated locomotive #50, conductor "Wehr", brakeman "Beaslin", engineman "Earp", fireman "Lehiman".
Reading down the left side, this train started at Atchee (milepost 28) with 7 empty flatcars and caboose #3. The "where taken" column shows where the various cars were picked up by milepost numver, and then dropped off by same in "where left" column.
So this eight car train then traveled to Wendella (milepost 41) and picked up three (full) water cars #019, #018, #021, two flatcars full of "timber", boxcar #218 full of "mdse" (merchandise ???), and empty stockcar #412, 10 more empty flatcars and a gondola full of coal.
BTW - On the Uintah it is easy to figure out the kind of car that your talking about by number as 100 series are flat, 200 series are box, 300 series are gondolas, and 400 series are stock cars.
So now at Wendella, heading down grade towars Dragon, engine #50 is braking for 26 cars!
Now switching to the "where left" column you can see where this train stopped and let off the variuos cars. Water cars #018 and #021 were left at Dragon, along with stock car #412, six empty flat cars, and the load of coal on gondola #319.
The train then continued down grade to Rainbow Junction, where the two flat cars of "timber", the boxcar #218, and two empty flat cars were split out and backed down in to Watson.
the remaining train was then taken to Rainbow and switched out the remaing cars to "R.B." ( Rainbow), "C.W. (China Wall), and "T.R." (Thimble Rock) mines.
The engine then created another train for the return trip numbered "#22".
This consisted of the same caboose (as it was never "left") and five full flatcars of "ore" (Gilsonite) and now empty water car #021 ( this car is not listed here but on the right side of the page in the more "chicken scratch" section) for the trip down to Rainbow Junction. There it added two empty flat cars (the same empty flatcars it had deliverd a few hours earlier??????? and a now (assumed) empty boxcar #218. At mile post 55 (Either Rector or Country Boy siding) it picked up two flatcars full of gilsonite and a boxcar full also.
Here this page gets a little fuzzy, normally the conductors notes are easier to discern.
It looks like this train is renumbered #20?
From what I can make of it it looks as if they made up a string of 10 full flat cars at Dragon, along with the three now empty water cars from that morning (018, 019, 021) and headed up grade towards Wendella. At "East Vac" (milepost 46.5) they picked up stock car #410 and proceeded to Wendalla (milepost 41). It looks like to me that the check marks next to flatcar numbers 147, 173, 131, 101, 162, and boxcar #214 indicate thay were the ones to gead back over to Atchee (milepost 28), everything else was left at Wendella (because the 5% grade was a killer).
Remarks at lower left corner show "162 flat", I assume thet this meant a flat spot on wheel to flatcar #162.
Annotation at lower righ was the seal numbers ofr the doors on boxcar #218 that was unloaded at Watson that morning, R (right) #14876, L (left) 14875, E (end) 14912.
Don't know why the is an equation for double time in the upper right side of this page, 109.70 X 2 = 219.40.
Maybe just contemplating what he was really worth?
Any comments welcome.
