A Visiting Locomotive

Yesterday (January 6) Union Pacific dropped off a little surprise at the museum. While Dan Harbeke, UP's public relations manager for Utah, had told us of its impending arrival at the January chapter meeting, nobody knew when the Olympic Torch Relay locomotives would come.

This year marks ten years since the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and Salt Lake is holding a sort of celebration to commemorate the event. UP has been very cooperative in the proceedings, and brought the matching set (UP 2001 and 2002) to the Roper shops to be cleaned up. UP 2001 is now on Track 1 in Ogden, and UP 2002 is parked at the Salt Lake UTA Frontrunner station.

The Utah State Railroad Museum is home to the Torch Car, which was rebuilt from the 1998 Winter Olympics torch car, and is painted to match the locomotives. Right now it is in the Eccles Rail Center, out of sight from the 2001, but the next time UP's local switching crew visits the grain elevators to the south of the museum they will pull the car out and couple it to the locomotive for a temporary display.