The profile is classic USRA but that fat stack says Union Pacific. Some 625 light 2-8-2’s were turned out for American railroads under control of the United States Railroad Administration during World War I. Here one of 40 that went to UP and its subsidiaries, the 2498, is working the annual sugar beet “campaign” north of Denver in the final days of 1956. In a week or two, the engine will rejoin the storage line at the Denver roundhouse to await perhaps one more harvest season. Then, to scrap. On other roads, the 2498 would be a Mikado, but the UP employees’ timetable lists it as a MacArthur in deference to one of the heroes of World War II.
