Re: Snow Plows and Tipton Loop

If you look carefully at all of the snow plow photos you can see they are not all the same though the size is similar, but I don't recall seeing a photo with the numbers 02 so I cannot rule out a rebuilding of No. 01. However, as Taylor mentioned, there are photos of a plow west bound at McEwen, which would have originated a Baker. On the other hand, when the East bound passenger train became stuck between Larch and S Wye the rescue train was made up at Austin, 28 miles and two summits away. It would seem quicker and easier to bring a plow from Baker if one was available.

Side Bar Note: Our Heisler #3 was one of the four locomotives in the rescue train.

On the subject of the Tipton Loop: I think the freight warehouse was very short lived. It only served the Greenhorn mining boom which, like all such booms, lasted only a few years. There were livestock facilitie there for as long as the railroad lasted though. The typical opperating pattern for ranchers in Baker Valley was to ship their cattle to the high country for the summer, and bring them back down in the fall. As these movements were often specials that terminated at Tipton, it would likely be easier to turn them on a loop. That does not explain the need of a wye however. There are photos of #251 using the wye to turn a stock special in 1946, the last year of such movements. The ground where the loop was built is rather swampy, and maybe the loop became a maintenance issue.

Jeff, one these days when you are not playing train I will drag you up to Tipton and you can show us where the stock pens were.