Re: Connecting the narrow gauge with SG logging mallets

The plutonium transporting car was a UP-yellow passenger car that blended perfectly with the City of Portland and City of Saint Louis passenger consists. The window configuration was essentially
that of a dining car, and perhaps it had been a dining car at one time. The windows were fogged so no one could look inside. A number of armed guards rode in the car, but for them it was not much of a scenic ride. Usually on Tuesdays the UP would send an engine from Hinkle to Richland, and one of the four Hanford ALCO RS-1s would take the car the 25 miles from the 200-West area to Richland. The UP engine would then take the car directly to Hinkle and switch it on to the "City of Portland". I don't know if the car was switched to the "City of Saint Louis" in Cheyenne or was taken on a special run to Denver for hand-off to the Rio Grande and the delivery to Rocky Flats. This was not long before plutonium production ended at Hanford. In the intervening years the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant and the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant have been dismantled. Some of the UP passenger cars survive from those days, as do two of the ALCO RS-1s, andHanford's GP-7. Happily the cold war is long over, and plutonium buttons no longer travel on passenger trains.