A quad of Utah Railway MK50-3's lead a Union Pacific coal train by the rickety, abandoned UP depot at Spanish Fork, Utah. This Harriman era station was donated by UP to a local chapter of the Old Timer's Club in the mid-1970's, soon dedicated as the 'Brandt Hall'. For the past 30 years or so, this structure has sat derelict and abandoned without any maintenance or weather proofing. My father and I visited this station for the first time in 1973 and found a friendly UP agent on hand, offering trainorders to passing freights. The depot even had a semaphore signal out front controlled by a lever in the office bay. Upgrading of the mainline closed the Spanish Fork agency when the Provo Subdivision received CTC in the early 1980's. Now trains breeze by at track speed without so much as slowing down at Spanish Fork, some 744.5 miles east of Los Angeles. If you look closely, a small prop plane is cruising above the train, having just taken off from nearby Spanish Fork Municipal Airport.
Oh the stories these special buildings could tell. Originally the brains of the rails they monitored, working to insure effecient rail service for our nation! A tribute!
