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In reply to this post by Mallory Hope Ferrell
By the end of 1885 the ORER listings for the DSP&P had finally caught up with how many waycars were actually on the ground in Colorado. For Nov. it listed 21 cars numbered 1500 - 1520. However the UP Annual Report indicated 21 car at the beginning of 1885 but only 19 as of Dec. 31. How would 3 cars suddenly disappear within the space of perhaps 6 months? Of course, wrecks, fires, floods - acts of God. How 'bout sales? Three cars gone just like that - to where?
The Nov. 1887 ORER listed the DSP&P series as 1500 to 1520 - 21 numeral holders - but only 19 cars. Could it be - are there dots that can be connected to support the idea - that 3 cars were sold to the Utah & Northern in late 1885? Let's see... in the first UP Annual Report (June 1885) that enumerated the cars of its holdings the U&N had 19 cabooses; but by 31 Dec. 1885 the U&N had 23 cars. One roster increasing and one decreasing. And those were the only real changes to any of the NG cabooses rosters between the two Annual Reports.
(The ORERs are notoriously off kilter when it comes to accurate numbers on a given listing. They take months, even years within these early volumes, to catch up to roster changes. The Annual Reports should be considered more accurate. Their shortcoming is that they only occurred once a year - generally.)
The South Park (and DL&G) roster continued to dwindle; UP AR 1886 - 17 SP waycars; AR 1890 - 16 cars; AR 1892 - 15 cars; AR 1893 - 11 cars. By then, of course, the OSL&UN was fully sg'd and many SP cars that had gone to Utah in the 1885 - 1887 period had returned to Colorado. Now what we may have was U&N 1601 on the SP as a borrowed car. Imagine that! The SP might have leased a car it had originally owned - hey, the dots are there! Its not just fanciful speculation. Why 1601? Because a DL&G letter dated 27 Jan. 1895 included an inventory of this car's materials and equipment. Dots, dots, dots...
1893 seems to be the last UP AR that listed DL&G equipment. From this point all we have are the Auditors Journal for the South Park. In July 1894 the Journal listed the number of Cabooses to be 17 !!! But this could be a copying error as one would expect it to be 11. Or the auditor found and counted 6 foreign cars on the line - seems unlikely to me. Besides, the Journal seemed to have been in a constant state of correcting "cars carried on the books" even tho they were disposed of months or even years before. Where would we be without bean counters? (In other words don't get hung up on this!)
According to the ORER, by the end of 1893, the SP was down to 12 cars no'd. 1500 -1519. As we have seen the AR indicated 11 but note that car 1520 had been vacated by the Register. After this - 1894 onward to 1898 - the DL&G was not listed in the ORER either.
The next record of total car accounting occurred in the June 1898 DL&G Annual Report. This was the first AR I am aware of for the SP after 1893. In this Report the RR listed 12 Cabooses - with Westinghouse Brakes, btw. Two of them were also equipped with Selden Couplers. WHEN did the additional car become SP property?
A letter dated 25 March, 1896, from the Receivers of the OSL&UN to the Circuit Court of the United States for Idaho petitioned for permission to sell as much of their narrow gauge equipment as they could. The letter, several pages long, presented argument that the equipment was sitting idle and of no use to the now Broad Gauged RR. It should be sold before it deteriorated beyond usefulness. Specifically, the RR was looking to sell ng Stock Cars - apparently they had the interest a potential buyer. Hmmmm. Wonder who that might have been? The letter proposed that they would sell the cars for 50.00 each.
Then we find in a Dec. 1896 entry of the Auditors Journal for the UPD&G that they had purchased 2 stock cars with U&N numbers for 150.00 total. The amount might seem out of whack until one considers that the cost of the cars could have included $25 each for shipping and handling. In fact, the two cars were purchased in Oct. 1896. Can we then suppose, that at or about the same time, the DL&G bought the U&N caboose it had inventoried for tools and materials in Jan. 1895?
Dots, dots, dots... sometimes they seem clear and sometimes not. We do not know when the caboose was added. We do not know, as fact, 1601 was the new caboose - or that it was the old caboose come home as the new caboose. We also don't know where else they would get such a caboose - can any of you even tell me which of the 12 DL&G cars was the former U&N car?
On the other hand, is there another set of more likely dots out there? Y'all tell me. I'll tell you this; I am fast becoming altogether unimpressed with how much the U&N or any of the other NG roads contributed to the C&S Caboose Roster. Right now I see just Two viable possibilities and one of those was from the SG Denver & New Orleans.
As far as 1005 and 1008 being former U&N cars simply because they have similar characteristics (rounded corners?) is that the only explanation for that? I am not inclined to believe so; though it is a possibility. I see just one car from the U&N that very well could have been a former DSP&P car. Having that heritage about it, could we tell it apart from the rest of the former South Park bobbers?
Oh, and just for the record - That I've shared this information and my thoughts does NOT grant anyone the liberty to repeat it without explicated connection to its origin - my name and where you read it! I may not own the content of the documents I possess but I own the logic I've contrived from what those documents say!
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