Heber Valley Railroad, standard gauge

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The Heber Valley Railroad is a 16 mile line in Utah. It is Utah's only heritage line. The state of Utah operates the line.

Completed in 1899 as a standard gauge railroad by the Rio Grande Western. This RR was changing from 3 foot gauge to standard gauge from Denver to Salt Lake city. In its' earliest years the locals called it The Heber Creeper because of its slow assent down Provo Canyon.

In the 1930s The Heber station loaded more sheep than any station in the Nation. Cattle was also a major cargo.

It stopped operating in 1970. It Operated later as the Heber Creeper RR and later went belly up. Sometime after that the state took over. Today It has 3 Steam locomotives. One a 2-8-0 that is operational. When I visited this one loco was under going minor repairs between special runs. the other 2-8-0 and a 0-6-0 switcher are out of service.

EMD diesels are the normal motive power used. The last time I visited kids had broken almost all the windows out of 3 of the passenger cars. They said there was almost more ballast in the cars than under them. The normal train today has a chair car, a snack-bar car, 2 open air cars and a caboose. Some how the caboose was remodeled to hold 100 people. I forgot to look; but I believe that is not possible. There are a number of passenger cars and maintenance cars in the yard at Heber. Other then the EMDs, there are 3 or 4 other diesels. One diesel was without a body. There are a number of freight cars that look mostly out of service. The Shops or engine house has three stalls with tracks going into two of the stalls with room for 4 locomotives total. There was work going on to add a third track to the third stall. This third stall was full of machinery. But there was room between the large machines for a locomotive.

When we left the state and entered Idaho I counted over 2000 lumber cars stored on a branch line going into the mountains. These are the cars with end and center bulkheads. They completely block the line for miles. In the small cities there was a break in the lineup, so autos could cross the tracks. Because of the trees and building I was unable to get an exact count while on the move. Later I counted 400 to 500 grain cars.

Since grain was being harvested I suspect most of these will be used. while the economy will let the lumber cars sit idle. A big saw mill we passed was in operation. It seemed many unused spurs and sidings were being used to store unused cars. It shows how the economy has hurt these industries.

I was surprised how may odd passenger cars, Locomotives, etc. were parked on small spurs and sidings looking like they had been there for years. Farms had numerous box cars without trucks (wheels) in use as storage buildings.

There was an abundance of used ties for sale as the railroads were replacing wooden ties with cement ties on the main lines.

PS: I thought it interesting for the North West States, that the following have historical railroads in operation

California has 29 A South West State.

Colorado has 11

Washington 9

Oregon 7

New Mexico 1

Utah 1 If you want to look up your own state see:

The rest 0 http://en.wikipedia....e_United_States