Historic train restoration stalls at Ogden's Union Station

Associated Press
Dec. 20, 2019

A 138-year-old historic locomotive sits in pieces at Union Station, consigned to limbo after a local restoration effort was frozen out.

Volunteers with the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society‘s Golden Spike chapter have toiled since 1992 in the Union Station train shop to painstakingly refurbish Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad locomotive No. 223, until Ogden City locked them out earlier this year.

The components are sealed in the shop — except the rust-caked boiler, which is perched open to the elements on a platform nearby in the rear of the historic depot.

Everyone involved has an opinion about what should be done with the 1881 locomotive, which is owned by the state via its Utah Division of State History.

The city asked the Golden Spike group to suspend its work while officials reviewed the ownership situation and looked into safety and liability concerns related to volunteers working on the locomotive.

City officials at that point said they wanted the state to transfer title to Ogden, where the train has been for more than 25 years. But that did not happen, and now the state is considering eventually moving the locomotive to a new state history museum being planned in Salt Lake City.

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