A rare MK50-3 locomotive that spent more than a decade moving freight over Utah’s famed Soldier Summit has been saved by the Promontory Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. Utah Railway 5004 is the latest locomotive with connections to the Beehive State that the group has acquired, and plans call for it to be displayed at the Utah State Railroad Museum in Ogden. 

Utah 5004 was one of six MK5000C demonstrator locomotives built by Morrison-Knudsen in August 1995. As a demonstrator, it tested its 5,000-horsepower capabilities on the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific between 1994 and 1995, and later on BC Rail in 1998. It was subsequently tested by, and later sold to, Utah Railway in November 2000. Due to drivetrain failures associated with the Caterpillar engine and Kato traction generator, 5004 was sent to Motive Power Industries in 2003 and converted into an MK50-3. The locomotive spent the next decade and a half hauling unit coal, unit oil, and mixed commodity trains over Soldier Summit and along Utah’s Wasatch Front. Following the decline in coal traffic on Utah Railway in 2017, 5004 and its siblings were relocated to the Kyle Railroad, a fellow Genesee & Wyoming property operating in Colorado and Kansas. All six units have since been sidelined. Locomotive 5004 is the first to be preserved. 

NRHS chapter officials said the locomotive will be moved to Ogden soon. The group is also looking for opportunities to keep the locomotive in service. 

—Justin Franz