Utah
Railway - (en)
The Utah Railway (AAR reporting marks UTAH) is a class 3 regional
railroad serving the state of Utah.
The Utah Railway Company was incorporated on January 24 1912, with the
name of Utah Coal Railway Company, shortened to Utah Railway Company
in May of the same year. It was founded to haul coal from the
company's mines to Provo, Utah, in reaction to company disappointment
in the service and route of the existing Denver & Rio Grande
Railroad nearby. The company was one of the earliest coal hauling
railroads to employ diesel locomotives, and was early to adopt
automation technologies, including the use of flashing rear end
devices instead of cabooses. Parent company Mueller Industries, a
manufacturer of copper products, sold the Utah Railway in 2002 to
Genesee and Wyoming Railroad (Stock market symbol GWI), a shorltine
and regional railroad holding company.
Today's Utah Railway
Today's Utah Railway operates over 423 miles of track between Grand
Junction, Colorado, and Provo, Utah, of which 45 miles are owned, and
the remainder operated under agreements with BNSF Railway and Union
Pacific. The company still hauls a significant amount of coal; of the
90,000 carloads hauled each year, over two thirds are coal. The Utah
Railway also owns a subsidiary railroad, the Salt Lake City Southern
Railroad, serving over 30 customers on over 25 miles of track between
Salt Lake City and Draper, Utah.
The Beehive Logo
From earliest times, the symbol of the Utah Railway Company has been
the beehive, which is also the state symbol. Normally, GWI alters the
corporate logos of its acquisitions to match the parent company's
logo, but in a nod to tradition, the beehive was retained within a
logo similar to the parent company's design.
