Hi, my name is Don Strack. I have been interested in railroading and Union Pacific since my early teens, when I would ride my bicycle from my parents suburban home, many, many miles to either Union Pacific’s North Yard, or to Rio Grande’s Roper Yard, both in Salt Lake City. My interest in Union Pacific started early and was nurtured by two uncles who worked for Union Pacific, one as a fireman and the other as a ticket agent. My specific interest in UP’s diesel locomotives developed while employed, for almost ten years, by Union Pacific as a journeyman mechanic in the Salt Lake Shops.
My interest in Utah's railroads and their history dates back to 1978. My first chance at being published came in 1982 when I furnished a brief history of railroads in the Tintic mining district. Most of my publishing efforts have focused on Union Pacific’s fleet of diesel locomotives, and I have completed seven books and eighteen magazine articles, and also contributed to two other books, all about UP’s diesel locomotives. My first publication about Utah’s railroading history came in 1997 with "Ogden Rails," a history of railroads in Ogden, Utah, from 1869 to today; I have also given four lectures on these same subjects. In addition, I have contributed to three other book projects about Utah’s railroad industry.
Future projects include publications on 1) Union Pacific’s cabooses; 2) complete histories of Utah’s coal mining and railroads, and Utah's copper mining and railroads, and 3) an examination of the relationship between Brigham Young and the Utah’s pioneer railroads.
I discovered computers in 1986 on a Zenith 100 that my Dad built from a kit. I ran CP/M as an operating system, and used a DOS emulator. I later bought an 8088 machine that had a 12mHz processor and 512k RAM, then a 286 machine, with GeoWorks as the OS, with 2meg of RAM and a 10meg hard drive. I bought Windows as an after market OS for that machine, and have been upgrading constantly ever since. People can complain about Microsoft and Windows all they want, but I remember what it was like before, and this stuff is absolutely great! I worked for many years with WordPerfect for DOS, and now I use Word 97 for Windows, which with its macro writing feature, makes writing and roster building a lot easier.
Until recently, I moderated an e-mail discussion group on OneList, then eGroups, then YahooGroups, about locomotives called LocoNotes, with well over 700 subscribers, and I participate in several other discussion groups.