Salt Lake & Utah Railroad
Compiled by Don Strack
This page was last updated on May 7, 2011.
Salt Lake & Utah Chronological History — A chronological listing of Salt Lake & Utah research notes.
Salt Lake & Utah History — Information scanned from Interurbans of Utah by Ira Swett.
Salt Lake & Utah Equipment — Information about SL&U's passenger and freight equipment (see also the equipment portion scanned from Interurbans of Utah by Ira Swett)
Salt Lake & Utah Map — A Google map of the Salt Lake & Utah Railroad, put together with the help of Steve Seguine, based on traces of the abandoned (in 1947) route through Salt Lake and Utah counties. The map is based on examination of the new feature in Google Maps that shows property lines, along with a couple SL&U maps I have, and USGS topo maps on Acme Mapper.
Other Links
Jim Harrawood's Salt Lake & Utah page.
Orem City Museum (broken link: http://members.aol.com/trainclub/scera.html)
Salt Lake & Utah page from 1934 Official Guide (broken link: http://206.103.49.193/guides/htm/slu34og.htm)
Pleasant Grove City History page. (broken link: http://www.plgrove.org/Historical/utahrailroad.htm)
Other Information
Red Arrow Fast Freight Service — Express Service At Freight Rates
The Legend of the Red Arrow Fast Freight 50' Box Cars
by Gordon Cardall
In the late 30's and early 1940's, the Purity Biscuit Company built a new wholesale bakery at about 7th South and what was originally 1st West (now 200 West) in Salt Lake City, located on a spur on the Salt Lake & Utah RR mainline. They baked several kinds of biscuits, but mostly cookies, and distributed them around the state. They had a similar bakery in Denver, Colorado. After a couple of years, their business increased to the point where they needed larger facilities. Instead they decided to bake several types of cookies in the Salt Lake plant and different ones at the Denver plant, and ship them back and forth in box cars over night. They were loaded out on the Salt Lake & Utah, which hauled them to a Provo warehouse to unload a drop shipment out of the car and then they turned it over to the Rio Grande for shipment of the remainder to Denver. The same thing happened in the other direction. As they were speculating painting their own box cars, the Salt Lake & Utah ceased operation in early 1947. Bamberger bought the track as far as 13th South, so they were interchanged with the Rio Grande at that point. They used the slogan "Red Arrow Fast Freight" on some of their passenger cars. As far as I know, the slogan "Express Service at Freight Rates" was never painted on any of their equipment, but was printed several times on their passenger schedule.
About the same time, Purity Biscuit was sold to Nabisco, and soon after, the Denver & Rio Grande painted a small fleet of their box cars "Cookie Boxes".
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