DSP&P Litchfield Boxcar Plans / Photos

[jason midyette]

Greetings all,

As the restoration work on DSP&P boxcar 608 nears completion, I am looking to sort out some details (namely the original lettering and the roofwalk construction) for the DSP&PHS.

Does anyone out there have any good photos, drawings or plans of these cars that they would be willing to share?

Thanks

Jason Midyette

[Robert McFarland]

I'm hoping that they'll do it in its original as delivered look(end ladders,Eames vacuum brakes,etc.)

[Robert McFarland]

Ron Rudnick's DSP&P Freight car booklet.Crain's Railway Pages has a copy of Maxwell's 26' Litchfield  plans.Poor books George S-C books Kiersey collection DPL.The photo in the Pictorial of the Brooks engine in front of the original Leadville depot shows a Litchfield car showing some of the roof detail.An article in Bogies&Loop about Eames brakes has a photo showing the underbody details of Art Wallace's Litchfield car incuding the Eames brake rigging.

[Jeff Ramsey]

[Jeff Ramsey]

Might be from a 800 series boxcar?

[Dave Eggleston]

A couple more shots of the UP car at Sunset that Jeff posted above, which also shows caboose/headend CC boxcar 026552. These two cars were moved to Sunset on July 8th or 9th, 1893, reportedly along with a third boxcar, replacing the Sunset station that had burned courtesy of some wayward fireworks on the 4th of July that year.

The opposite side:


The opposite end of the car:


Both photos from the Boulder Historical Society collection.

Jeff, where was that second shot taken?

[Jeff Ramsey]

Second image is from the first Leadville depot.

[Robert McFarland]

B&L Volume 10 Issue 4 Page 5 July 2009 Shows the underside of Art's car showing the Eames brake rigging

[jason midyette]

Interesting info on the date that and reason that 608 was moved to Sunset. Do you know if the cars were de-trucked at that time?

Also, may I ask where you found the information on the date they were moved to Sunset? (I am not doubting you or trying to debate, just interested in knowing so that I have the full story of 608 correct)

Thanks

Jason Midyette

[Dave Eggleston]

Jason,

Were the cars de-trucked? Here's what I know.

From the Boulder Daily Camera:
7/6/1893: “The railroad station at Sunset was totally destroyed by fire on the Fourth. Hardly a vestige remains now to be seen. A new depot will likely be built as that is the present terminus of things. The cause of the fire is a mystery but is said [illegible] from people throwing [illegible].”
7/9/1893: “Three boxcars now form the laudable station house at Sunset. Why not send a few flat cars for the passengers who wait for the train?”

Rumors were already in the papers that the line was in financial peril, barely covering expenses. I just can't believe they'd rebuild the station given the shoestring economics the line had been run under for years. I really believe that boxcars were as good at the UP was going to give Sunset.

A photo I came across last week may answer the de-trucking, showing the UP boxcar and 026552 placed just east of the ground occupied by the GSL&P station. The photo is remarkable: No C&N trestle across Four Mile Creek (from the Holt Mill on the left edge of the photo to the station grounds), no Columbine Hotel built yet (it would sit to the right of the two boxcars on the sidings), and then there's that house tilting into the creek itself (just above the center of the photo). All of this makes me believe this is a view of Sunset after the May 31, 1894, floods and the track in the center foreground is the original GSL&P mainline, not the C&N track to Ward. And, if this is a post-flood picture, those two boxcars on the track above the station-boxcars are stranded, theoretically the two other boxcars grounded later as sheds to the west of the C&N depot. This is Boulder Historical Society 213-4-5 photo 8, http://file:///Users/xvcs13/Desktop/Sunset%201894%3F%20after%20flood%3F%20no%20C&N%20wye%20or%20station%20BHS%20213-4-5photo_8.webp

Here is the full image:



And here is a detail showing the station boxcars and the two boxcars on track above them. Are 608/24152 and 026552 still on their trucks? It sure looks like they are grounded, or some type of skirt is around the base. Note 026552 does not sport the lean-to shed on the creek side that is seen in most other photos:



Jason, this leads to some confusion on my part, likely because I haven't spent any time digging into the C&N beyond looking at pictures of Sunset which show 608/24152 on the ground in the early C&N days. Some of this seems to contradict what I see at http://www.dspphs.org/Box-Car-608.html Was 608 retrucked for a short period between 1898-ish and when it moved to Cardinal? Was it in actual service or trucked simply to make the move?

[jason midyette]

That is so cool! Thank you very much!

I had always wondered what happened to the GSL&P's Sunset Depot, since it was clearly gone by the time the Colorado & Northwestern came to town in 1897.

608's history just keeps getting more interesting;

1879-1885 or so - DSP&P Boxcar

1885 or so - July 1893 - GSL&P boxcar (well, UP box on the GSL&P)

July 1893 - May 1894 - Sunset Depot (I would guess it was the "freight room")

May 1894 - around 1909 - Shed in Sunset
The 2 windows by the side door seem to have been installed during this period (or perhaps by the railroad for its "freight room" use?)

around 1909 - 1920 - Cardinal Section House on the C&N-W / DB&W
The windows in the end door opening and other side of the car most likely date from this period.

1920 - 2004 - Cabin at Cardinal

Not only is it the sole surviving DSP&P boxcar, it is the sole surviving object that saw service on the GSL&P and probably the only railcar from 1879 with its original siding, much of its original paint and lettering. (all of which it will be keeping)

As to the history of the car on the DSP&P site, 608's history was less clear at the time that was written.  When we moved the car from Cardinal to Boulder in 2004, it was thought that all of the cars that had been on the ground in Sunset had been destroyed after the C&N/DB&W was abandoned, with the last one lasting into the late 1960's. It was also known (through photos) that the C&NW had leased some ancient boxcars from the UPD&G/DL&G in 1897 for use until the new cars arrived. As such, it was assumed that 608 had to be one of those cars. Several years ago, it was put together and shown convincingly that 608 was once of the cars on the ground in Sunset. No one had found the Daily Camera articles or photos that you have shown, so it was assumed that 608 and the others had been trapped in Sunset by the flood in 1894 and just abandoned. Now we know why they were in Sunset and most likely where their trucks etc went.

Jason Midyette

[Dave Eggleston]

As I've dug deeper into the GSL&P in the past month or so I've found an absolutely fascinating railroad. Thanks for helping close some of the gaps in my knowledge!

The big caveat: In that picture I shared, and in the article, too, nothing refers specifically to 608 directly. We're going on the siting of the car on the ground...which seems as good as we'll get. I'll stake that car is 608. I had always wondered about Sunset station. I can't be the first historian to have read that newspaper article!

Dating the appearance of DSP&P stock (in original lettering, UP lettering or DL&G lettering) on the GSL&P is something I have on my open question list for the railroad. I've been slowly developing a rough timeline of when engines and stock are seen or referred to on the line.

The line clearly started with flat, coal, box and passenger stock all from the CCRR in 1882/83, and very likely this was the only livery into 1885-86. Boxcars at this time seem exclusively of the 1880 UP CC# 1500-1702 batch with what I believe are two exceptions: 01542 looks to be a pre-1878 boxcar and the boxcar in station use at Salina may have also been a pre-1878 car. While photos clearly show South Park, UP and U&N lettered cars on the line, and also illegibly lettered cars with South Park characteristics (6-stake coal cars, coal cars with removable end boards with no end stay rods and boxcars with ladders), from what I can date and theorize on, it was a CCRR equipped line into 1886. A 6-stake coal car (of Rudnick's phase I 1882 car detail) is in a dated photo (August 1887) at Sunset. After 1888 6-stake DSPP coal cars of all three Rudnick phases are seen and by 1890 DL&G engines and passenger stock (and one KC car in 1891) are seen more often than not. As to South Park boxcars I think I've only seen them in photos of the later years of the line, post-1889. The U&N flatcar is in an 1894 photo. I am hoping the papers reveal a shipment of cars into Boulder--they didn't often but at times these things are called out.

I can identify at least three influxes of cars: CCRR original cars, a UP shipment of cars (lettered UP or DSP&P and maybe CC? and including caboose/baggage CC 026552) of ca 1886 and another potential batch with passenger stock in 1890. There may have been more.

The question is: When did 608 become 24152? Is it even possible to date that? The car would not have been on the GSL&P before that date. So I wonder if it is possible to tighten 608's arrival on the line to ca 1887-1888?

[Robert McFarland]

There is quite a bit of info and photos of Sunset in the archives of the NGDF-some of it by Todd Hackett

[Jim Courtney]

FWIW, I dug through my files and found these two prints that I had purchased from John Maxwell back in the 1970s.

The Litchfield boxcar body that he photographed was set aside as a shed in Pine, located along the tail of the wye.

Maxwell photographed the car body in 1949.


Maxwell negative number G-1283A


The are multiple lettering styles very faintly visible, from DSP&P to UP to early C&S. Maxwell couldn't discern the full original car number, but recorded DSP&P 66?.  He highlighted the original DSP&P lettering as best he could.  Here is a view of the end that was unattached to the shed.


Maxwell negative number G-1283B

[Jeff Ramsey]

So yes and no Jason to get the story strait;
1) 24152 never ran an the C&NW, with the exception of being moved to Cardinal. See Sunset Boulder County ,but did on the GSL&P.
2) 608 is one of 3 remaining Litchfield DSP&P boxcar bodies surviving. One of them being 24xxx (I cant remember) as the west carbody of the Como motor car house and the second being the poorest of the 2 car bodies at Saint Elmo, the 24148 as UP 24000s being former DSP&P box cars.

[Jeff Ramsey]

[Jeff Young]

That fence in Pine is crying out to be modelled….

[Dave Eggleston]

Robert, by "archives" on the NGDF, do you mean the stored message threads or is there an archive of files that I'm missing?

[Robert McFarland]

Stored message threads.

[Dave Eggleston]

Thanks. Thought for a second I'd missed a cache of material!