Union Pacific 4439

Union Pacific Railroad

Steam-Powered Locomotive

Built by:

Baldwin Locomotive Works – 1918

Wheel Arrangement:

0-6-0

Weight:

78 Tons

Donated by:

Union Pacific Railroad – 1957

A.57.04.04

Alan Weeks took this shot of UP 4439 on a retirement "fan trip" up Glendale Avenue in June 1956. Note the dark smoke that brought an end to her working days!

This “switch engine” was the very last steam-powered locomotive in regular railroad operation in Los Angeles County…  The Air Pollution Control District  put the kibosh on the old 4439 in 1957, ending nearly 100 years of steam railroading in Los Angeles.  She spent her last few years switching freight cars at the Harbor Belt Line yard in Wilmington where she was ‘stoked up’ once a week to haul loads of banana from the harbor to downtown Los Angeles.  The locomotive was to be scrapped on November 1, 1957, but a lucky last-minute reprieve saved her for display at Travel Town

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More Interesting Information:

Photographer Otto Perry got this shot of 4439 working in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1937.

U.P. 4439 was a true iron workhorse!  Locomotives like this one, which were shorter or smaller than the powerful regular freight and passenger engines, this were used by railroads throughout U.S. to sort or “switch” both freight and passenger cars in classification yards, terminals and repair shops.  No. 4439 worked for many years at Union Pacific’s busy Locomotive Shops in Cheyenne, Wyoming – where she labored day and night to shuttle the much larger main-line engines around the railroad’s repair and servicing facilities.

Towards the end of her working career, she was brought west to Los Angeles for switching duties on the L.A. Harbor Belt Line’s tracks around the fast-growing port.  

Loco 4439 just happened to be waiting at the Union Pacific's East Los Angeles station when the 1946 Chicago Cubs baseball team passed through, on their way to 'spring training' on Catalina Island. The railroad recently shared this great photo on their Facebook page!

As railroads transitioned from steam to Diesel locomotive power in the 1950s, No. 4439 would sometimes get a ‘day off’ from switching to pull a special excursion passenger train for local railfans.  She is pictured below on her last trip to Glendale in 1956.