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Smoke Across the Prairie UP By Ehernberger & Gschwind Union Pacific Nebraska Div
Smoke Across the Prairie UP By James Ehernberger & Francis Gschwind Union Pacific Nebraska Division
Hard Cover BUMPED corners and pages
Copyright 1964
61 Pages
For the greater part of a century, a traveler on the Great Plains, approaching the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, across the length of the Nebraska Division, beheld in the distance a long finger of smoke haze, stretching across the prairie from horizon to horizon. This was his first visible evidence of the steam power of the mighty railroad, long before even the first faint sound of whistle or exhaust could reach his ear. The great canopy of smoke stretched along the Valley of the Platte and hung over Lodge Pole Creek as far as the eye could see. It reached westward from the banks of Mighty Missouri at Council Bluffs and Omaha; it swept above the fields of corn, and alfalfa, and sugar beets; it floated over rolling wheat fields and vast range lands dotted by countless herds of cattle; it pointed ever westward; and finally drifted over the Wyoming capitol at Cheyenne to dissipate at last in the high, thin air of the uplands, at the foot of the Rockies. This awe-inspiring banner of smoke across the prairie was undoubtedly the most memorable trademark and symbol of the Nebraska Division of the Union Pacific, during the long era of steam locomotion.
To those who were fascinated by mountain railroading during the steam era ( and who was not?) flatland railroading, on a prairie division, may have seemed, at first glance, dull and undramatic by comparison. But this was only an illusion! For while the prairie railroad may have lacked the sheer drama of the ceaseless battle between heavy power and steep grades, in a setting of breathless grandeur and majesty, it had its own share of spine-tingling action and romantic allure. For who could fail to be fascinated by the sight of a long freight train rolling rapidly across the vast sweep of plains, under an endless sky; or a fast passenger train cascading along at a fabulous clip toward a rendezvous with the Blue Pacific, behind a high-drivered black monster which voiced its exhilaration into the prairie winds. Nor was prairie railroading, as on the Nebraska Division, merely stereotyped by heavy power, great speed, or changeless stretches of straightaway track. For another world existed just over the hill, where the branch or secondary line wound its way along. The lover of quaintness, of individuality, and of the unexpected needed only to follow the less frequent plume of smoke which disappeared into the distance away from the main line, to find his desires fulfilled. For there he found light rails heading out into the more remote reaches of the prairie, often following an ever-diminishing stream, crossing and re-crossing it en route to a small terminus where rails ended in a setting straight out of yesterday. Ancient, diminutive locomotives, long since banished from the main line by progress, followed the light rails through a peaceful countryside, shattering the tranquility of the ubiquitous trackside cottonwood trees with their passage and raining down sparks and cinders on their unprotesting foliage.
This, then, was the Union Pacific's Nebraska Division during the great steam era. Why a publication devoted entirely to one such division? All too often, the mighty Overland Route is remembered, under steam, mainly for the thunder of heavy power up Sherman Hill, the roar of articulateds over the Wahsatch, or the rumble of heavy tonnage over the Sierra Nevada. In his haste to reach the scenic uplands of the West, the railroad fan-photographer sometimes overlooked what he may have considered the drab spectacle of railroading on the plains. In all fairness, he had more than a passing acquaintance with the
Nebraska Division but did he really know it in its entirety? Probably not, for while the sight of a mighty 4-12-2 heading westward out of Omaha, a 4-8-4 streaking down the Platte Valley near Kearney, or a huge 4-6-6-4 pounding along somewhere west of North Platte may all have been familiar to him, yet he probably missed much of the excitement of the Nebraska Division under steam. Few, indeed, were those who knew the Hastings Branch, for instance, when heavy power trudged across the apparently interminable Platte River bridge at Denman; or those who saw the 2-10-2's come charging into Beatrice, or Sterling. Fewer still were those who witnessed the picturesque spectacle of a light 2-8-0 wandering along the banks of the North Loup River, bound for Ord. Seldom, if ever, did the steam enthusiast avail himself of the opportunity to watch and photograph a sugar beet extra trailing along behind a clanking 2-8-2, virtually in the shadow of Scotts Bluff on the far reaches of the North Platte Cut-Off; and he doubtless missed forever the rare pleasure of framing in his camera view finder one of the tiniest of antique Consolidations as it rambled over one of the countless trestles on the Kearney Branch, seemingly far removed from the throbbing pulse of the main line.
This volume does not intend, however, to present an all-time pictorial review of steam power and operation on the division throughout the entire era of steam. Instead it attempts, in the main, to afford a last backward glance at the sunset years, for however sad they may have seemed to the lover of the steam locomotive, they were, nevertheless, among the most interesting years of all. For this was the age of contrasts! Displaced oil burners from the dieselized divisions of the Far West worked side by side with coal burners of long standing residence. It was an era which saw an 0-6-0 or a 2-8-0 of ancient vintage outlast huge articulateds and Northerns, less than a quarter of a century old.
It is our hope, then, that the following pages will recall smoke-filled memories and help to re-create a vanished era for those who knew it; and serve, at least to some small extent, to acquaint the unfamiliar with the Nebraska Division of a colorful and now departed age.
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