There were two locomotives gifted to the Idaho State College in Pocatello in the 1930s only to be scrapped during WWII.

One of these was a BLW narrow-gauge 2-6-0 from 1878 and one was a UP standard-gauge 4-4-0 built in company shops in the 1890s maybe using components from an older locomotive.

I knew I had seen images of these locomotive and went looking for photos of these locomotives. I found photos in the book Internmountain Railroads: Standard and Narrow Gauge by Merrill D. Beal, published 1962 by Caxton Printers, Cadwell, Idaho.

We imported a couple of very similar 4-4-0's to Australia https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/image/17420_a014_a014000353 but they were long gone by WW2.

This happened quite a bit. Cities and institutions took locomotives, ships, and cannon as gifts and then years later wondered "What the hell do we want this for?" The USS Oregon was given to the City of Portland then donated as scrap during WWII. It wound up going to Japan after the war.

There exists debate to this day as to whether the WW2 scrap drives were worth the carnage to many historical artifacts:

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/re ... st-morale/

I don't have a picture handy, but the ex- C&S Mason Bogie at the University of Iowa was a tragic loss. Lots of other non- railroad stuff was scrapped to, and in fact, a lot of low-traffic lines were abandoned and scrapped at this time.

There's no question about it, most of the scrap drives were done for public relations purposes. Solely for the purpose of making civilians feel like they were doing something, without actually doing anything, so much of our history was destroyed for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
All of those metals melted down, could not be used for strategic purposes because nobody knew the metal content of them.
The were even cases where items were collected for scrap drive, and then as soon as the crowds left, wdte then unceremoniously dumped into rivers or landfills.
It sickens me to think of all we lost, for nothing.

There was also a Lehigh Valley inspection engine that was donated to a WW2 scrap drive. Very similar to the Reading inspection engine in St. Louis.

It looks like to me that UP 947 has piston valve conversions , yes, no ?? Also ,what make or model air pump is that do you think ? It would have been well worth scrapping if it had brought my cousin Marine Captain Maurice Amundson back from Guam.

The one of a kind Union Pacific, M-10000, was lost. One of the early diesel streamlined trains. Really sad to see such a unique train in the scrap yard.

At least four other Mason Bogies also met the torch in 1942, along with several other 19th and early 20th century era locomotives on the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. roster between 1942 and 1945. Not scrapped museum displays as the others mentioned, but still some pretty sad losses from a somewhat unique railroad. I believe most of the scrapped locomotives were stored in the company's main locomotive facilities. The surviving Mason 0-6-4T "Torch Lake" was stashed away in its own little single track shed at the far end of the line somewhere around 1933 and thankfully didn't meet the same fate.

Since non-railroad items were mentioned briefly, a historic movie theater I volunteer at lost its original marquee components (vertical sign blade and the horizontal components) to the scrap drives as I'm sure many others did. A portion of the steel structure from the massive sign blade still remains (part of the structure of the building facade) with obvious marks from the cutting torches that did the deed.

The last of the Manhattan Elevated Forneys on the IRT were lost, in 1943, despite best efforts of the yard personnel to hide them:

That's locomotive #137. It was built by Baldwin in July of 1882. After 1930, only #137 and #295 (another Baldwin) were kept by the IRT, for car moves around the 133rd Street Yard areas. The two locomotives were probably removed from service when the northern section of the 2nd Ave el closed on June 11th, 1940. Inspectors from the wartime US Office of Defense Transportation found them hidden under tarps in the 133rd St Yard. They were ordered to be scrapped in February, 1943.

Certainly, a lot of what today would be considered historic was scrapped at the time, much of it simply because it was junk to the folks involved. As stated in Raiders of the Lost Ark movie - a $2 watch buried today and found thousands of years from now is a priceless antique.

The scrap drives also actually saved some equipment that was then used for decades. From a project I am working on....

Farrell’s Locomotive Works (Brinkley, Arkansas) specialized in buying old and worn out railroad steam locomotives, rebuilding them, and then selling them back into the industry. Many of their customers were logging and shortline railroads, but even the U.S. federal government was a major customer. During World War II, the firm rebuilt a number of steam locomotives for the U.S. Army and Navy, and for a number of foreign countries. Because of this, the company was one of the first Arkansas industries to receive an AA-1 priority during World War II. The firm was known for searching along abandoned railroads, junk yards and other places for unused locomotives and cranes that could be rebuilt and sold. After the war, the locomotive business slowed, but didn’t end until the late 1950s.

Morgan’s Louisiana & Texas RR’s first locomotive was 4-4-0 "Sabine" which was enshrined in a Lafayette, La., park during 1923. During 1941 "Sabine" was donated as scrap metal to aid the effort during World War II, and it was cut up. Be safe.
John B. Corns

I think I kicked off this topic on another forum by lamenting the little Sumpter Valley Mogul lost to a scrap drive in the war of which Brian found a photo. I was curious about Alexander's article and read it. It represents no real research that I can discern and quotes no original sources. I suppose if you want to look for it you can find doubt about anything; I know a young man who really believes the world is flat.

To begin with, as the countries armed up, even before the war, scrap prices skyrocketed. To a bunch of hungry folks just coming out of the depression, scrap was cash and history couldn't be eaten and didn't put clothes on your kids. I knew the man who made a whole bunch of Eastern Oregon mining machinery go away and why he did it. The last day of his life he told me the stories of all the time in the Air Corps he almost died. Some of those stories will die with me. You don't want to know them. He started his logging career to steam off the Sumpter Valley. Maybe he saw that little Mogul.

I was too young to experience WWII, but I spent a lot of time researching it. I knew the people who fought and those who worked within the industries and those who gathered the materials to be recycled and who sacrificed and rationed. On a sinking ship at Pearl Harbor, going ashore at Normandy and fighting across Europe, guys whose factories went from making washing machines to making aircraft. Not one of them had a doubt as to the scrap collection. Maybe it was just really good propaganda. Except some of them were the ones doing the propaganda and they were convinced it needed doing, too. We can think up some doubt now; maybe some of them did then but I haven't found it if they did.

Wars are messy. If you're going to win one against a determined enemy, you make every effort you can figure out how to do. Some pay off and some don't but you don't know which is which up front. So you do them all. And if you're going to have a real inventor invent you something, you put a lot of different materials in front of him, most of which he probably won't end up using. So they gathered it all. They actually brought back the empty shell casings from the front to make pennies in 1944 so they could use the copper and zinc for other things. And scrap steel was one of the most useful materials of all. The 1943 pennies were steel. That they could get.

From a phrase they used at the time: "To win a war will cost you millions. To lose one? Takes all you've got." You can call that propaganda, it also happens to be true.

Yeah, I miss the locomotives I never got to see, too. Could they have done without scrapping them? I'll trust them on that one. They got the job done.

Timothy

Timothy -

Well said!


Les