Building Union Pacific 844 by John Bush Birth of the FEF-3 steam class Soft Cove

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Building Union Pacific 844 by John Bush Birth of the FEF-3 steam class Soft Cove
Building Union Pacific 844 by John Bush
Soft Cover  The birth of the FEF-3 steam class
Copyright 2013
56 Pages
Contents
Acknowledgements 2Service Years of the FEF-3 Series  31Introduction: W.A. Fleischer and the 844 5Retirement of the FEF-3 Series 37A Need for the FEF-3 Series 9Epilogue: Special FEF-3 Operations 41Construction of the FEF-3 Series 13Appendix 47Identifiable Modifications to the FEF-3 Series 27Bibliography 56
Some 70 years after its construction, Union Pacific Railroad steam locomotive No. 844 continues to be familiar to generations of rail enthusiasts. Its many public excursions and exhibitions for the railroad has allowed the eminent 4-8-4 type to evoke the era when steam propelled the Union Pacific. Often recited as part of the romance regarding No. 844 is that, when erected in December 1944, it was the Iasi steam locomotive built for Union Pacific. However, until recently, few details were available regarding a day-by-day accounting of the activity that involved the actual construction of 844. It turns out that a chance discovery in a household attic has yielded additional information about this process.
The discovery brings to light a series of communications that W.A. Fleischer, a career UP employee, had with the railroad's headquarters in Omaha, Neb. In these messages, Fleischer reported on the various stages of construction involving ten UP 4-8-4 steam locomotives, Nos. 835-844, that were erected in 1944 during the turbulent period of World War II. Classified as FEF-3 (Four-Eight-Four, third series) by Union Pacific, these engines were completed about 15 years before diesels took over all the work formerly done by steam on the railroad.
As Union Pacific's representative to the large locomotive manufacturing firm that constructed the 844 and her "sister" engines of the FEF-3 series, W.A. Fleischer was in a prime position to play an important role in the original construction of 844. Yet as is often the case, the name of an individual can fade into obscurity while a popular product that he or she helped to create lives on in perpetuity. While it is no longer possible to recount all of the personal details regarding the life of W.A. Fleischer, it is for the purpose of giving overdue credit for his role in the creation of No. 844 that the following information is provided.
Wilhem Adolph Fleischer was born Nov. 1, 1887, to John and Anna Fleischer of Grand Island, Nebraska. His father either owned or managed a tavern in Grand Island at one time. As the second oldest of five children, Wilhem preferred going by the name "William" or "Will." Recalled by family members as being very skilled with his hands regarding anything mechanical, William applied this talent by be-coming a career employee for the Union Pacific as a steam locomotive boiler inspector. Much of William's early training in this occupation was learned when in January 1903, at about age 16, he was first employed as a machinist's apprentice at the railroad's large roundhouse facility that dominated the east edge of Grand Island.
The Union Pacific main line had first reached Grand Island in July 1866. Located about 146 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Grand Island became the railroad's first crew and motive power change point west of Omaha. Facilities to maintain locomotives and repair freight cars were maintained here. While heavy locomotive repair and maintenance was done at the large UP shops in Omaha, the Grand Island roundhouse (comprised of 40 stalls at its peak) continued to perform running repairs and minor shop work on the many steam engines that worked in and out of the Grand Island terminal.
By April 1904, William had advanced to become a boilermaker's apprentice at the Grand Island facility. Three years later, in 1907, he had earned the level of Boilermaker First Class and was working at the Union Pacific shops in Omaha. That same year at about age 21, William married Anna Belle Griffin of Grand Island. The newlywed couple then moved to San Bernardino, Calif, where William took a job in September 1907 as Boilermaker First Class at a large locomotive shop facility for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. However, William's time working for the Santa Fe was short-lived. After about a year, in October 1908, he resigned from the AT&SF because of an illness in the family that required the Fleischers to return to Nebraska and Grand Island.
William and Anna Belle had two children. The first, Kenneth, was born while the family lived in San Bernardino. A second son, Leonard, was born in 1911 after their return to Grand Island. A family story relates that William forbade either of his sons to hire on with the railroad, citing the long hours and difficult work conditions required of railroaders. As a result, both sons instead became pharmacists.
In 1912, the Fleischer's home in Grand Island was located at 709 W. Sixth Street, close enough to the UP roundhouse that William could have walked to work. Later on, the Fleischers lived at 321 South Sycamore, farther from the UP yards. Between 1926 and 1936 William advanced through a series of job seniority positions at the Grand Island roundhouse, including Boiler Foreman and later Lead Mechanic. Another family story relates that William was proficient as a boiler inspector because his short stature and slight physical build allowed him to more easily squeeze inside the fireboxes, and other tight places, of locomotives that he was inspecting. (A 1943 wartime food stamp ration book states that he weighed 142 pounds at that time.)
Beginning in May 1936, William began holding a series of different positions in Union Pacific's Research and Mechanical Standards Department, as well as the
Motive Power and Machinery Department. This work in part required William to travel to Schenectady, N.Y., where he oversaw the construction of Union Pacific's newest and largest steam locomotives by the American Locomotive Company (Alco). William's duties, as outlined in documentation that he regularly submitted to the railroad's Omaha headquarters, was to make sure that Alco carried out the exacting specifications that the UP's own engineering department had drawn up regarding the various locomotives under construction.
William essentially served as the railroad's "quality control" representative at Alco during the era when Union Pacific built some of its largest and finest steam motive power. His job took him on extended business trips to Schenectady between 1936 and 1944, which coincides with the years that Union Pacific enlarged its motive power capability by constructing a fleet of 4-8-4 (Northern), 4-6-6-4 (Challenger) and 4-8-8-4 (Big Boy) steam locomotives. These engines were built in order to handle increasing amounts of freight and passenger tonnage that were moving across UP's widespread rail system both before and during World War II. By the early 1940s, while working at Alco, William's job description was as Head Boiler Superintendent for the Union Pacific.
Other than what can be determined from the reports that he dispatched to Omaha, little is known of William's activity at the Alco factory in Schenectady and his interaction with Alco employees. Available information suggests that William's time was split between working in Schenectady's erecting halls and reviewing the actual service performance of those locomotives that he had overseen at the factory. Small work notebooks kept by William provide documentation of boiler inspections that he performed on the original series of Challengers and Big Boys while they were in service at both Cheyenne and Ogden in the 1941-1942 period.
William reportedly stayed at a hotel in Schenectady during his employment at Alco. Details from a diary kept by Anna Belle relate that she traveled to New York state in the summer of 1944 and stayed with her husband while he oversaw erection of a final series of 4-8-4 engines ordered by Union Pacific. His work at Alco ended on December 23rd with the completion of the last steam locomotive built for Union Pacific, No. 844. Anna Belle and William departed by train for Nebraska almost immediately thereafter. They arrived back in Omaha on Christmas Day 1944, where they spent the holiday with relatives.
William's work with the FEF-3 class proved to be his last major job for the railroad. In May 1945, after about 41 years with Union Pacific, William took a railroad disability pension at age 57 because of a debilitating heart condition. He continued to live in Grand Island, where he may have on occasion still served as a technical consultant to the railroad on matters related to its steam power.
In 1950, William and Anna Belle moved to Columbus, Neb., in order to be closer to their two sons and their families. A family anecdote from this period reflects on the pride that William held for his former trade. It happened one day that William, his son Kenneth, and Kenneth's son Richard, were at the Columbus UP depot while a passenger train was in the station. The three were admiring the 4-8-4 type pulling the train, which very possibly was one of the FEF-3 series that William had overseen during their construction. As the train started up, the engineer was unable to get sufficient adhesion on the rails, which caused the engine's driving wheels to spin wildly in place. As Richard Fleischer later recalled, his grandfather "came unglued" at the sight and began berating the engineer for his poor operating skills. Richard's father had to physically restrain William, who would have otherwise climbed into the cab in order to continue admonishing the engineer for not treating his locomotive properly. Reflecting on the incident years later, Richard said "When it came to a steam locomotive, grandfather always thought that it was going to last if you took care of it."
WA. Fleischer died on July 19, 1956, at age 69 and was buried at Grand Island. Anna Belle and both of her sons subsequently passed on as well. In 2011, while cleaning out the attic of his family's former house, Richard Fleischer discovered a large travel trunk that his grandfather used during his trips to Schenectady. With no prior knowledge of the trunk or its contents, Richard was astounded to find it contained a series of documents, photographs and blueprints from his grandfather that related to his experiences at Alco. As a railroad enthusiast,
Richard quickly recognized the historic value of this material. It included not only documentation related to the erection of the late series of Challengers and Big Boys, but also a series of reports by William to Omaha regarding the final ten UP 4-8-4s to be built, including the 844.
William A. Fleischer did not live to see the last of his beloved UP steam locomotives retired from service in the late 1950s and scrapped. Nor did he live to know that No. 844, the last UP steam engine that he had overseen through its assembly process, from raw components to finished locomotive, would later become a "living legend" to generations of rail enthusiasts worldwide. However, thanks to the efforts of a grandson wanting to give recognition to the work of his grandfather, the following information is now chronicled as to when and how Union Pacific 844 took its first steamy breaths in the erecting halls of Schenectady.
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