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Show Inside the U.P. Depot A visitor with even the crudest photographic equipment has rarely rare-ly left i'ark City without at least a half doen frames of the colorful Union Pacific Depot at the bottom of Main. Hut despite its seemingly endless externa facination, the Victorian monument to railroad-ing's railroad-ing's golden age is practically never penetrated and few newcomers new-comers have seen the depot's interior, where time has almost stood still. should add several car loads to daily shipments. Although the last regular passenger train slipped out of I'ark City over 25 years ago, residents heard the familiar whistle several times during the 60's when the "Snowball Express" Ex-press" made annual trips into the City, carrying skiers from Salt Lake and Ogden. With the end of the "Snowball Express" and, later, the discontinuance discon-tinuance of Railway Express some I i f . ;? " 4.,.,a: ! I' ,,-,.. I ""'.rrrL. Freight Agent F.T. Dearden stands amidst the tools and materials of his trade . springs open with a clang, providing you know the proper combination of pulls and pushes. On the other side of the ticket window, freight agent Fay Dearden Dear-den goes about his daily business scheduling car loads of ore from Park City to Canada; keeping track of weights, charges, routes, destinations, and cargoes. He makes sure the right type of car is available for his customers, whether it is a tank, cover hopper or flat, and daily wades through a mountain of paper work, as every agent has done in Park City since the depot was built. The freight office is a large comfortable room kept warm by a good stove and lit with a bank of of hardwood chairs prove an irrestible invitation to sit a while and discuss trains-the most popular topic of conversation inside the Park City Depot. Like the waiting room, the freight office is liberally hung with the railroad's most notorious steam engines and streamliners. A large iron saie occupies a good portion of one wall and sits next to a table covered with a very well cared-for collection of flowering plants. When the work day has ended for Fay Dearden, he has but to climb the stairs to the home he shares with his wife Donna on the depot's second floor. On the opposite side of the waiting room lies the baggage and freight room. It is cavernous space with pine floors and walls. Sunlight barely shines through the tiny dirty, windows, casting faint shadows on heavy beamed ceilings. Once the heavy wooden door is slid back, a scale made mostly of brass comes to light. After a closer look, names, dates and drawings appear on the dingy walls. When the eyes become adjusted to the dim light, writing covers every wall; bearing the signatures and hallmarks of hundreds of Park City residents preserved for as long as 76 years on the walls of the baggage room at the Park City depot. Built in the 1880's in a lavish style to remind those arriving and departing of the fabulous wealth of Park City's silver mines, the depot is a Utah State historic site and remains one of the City's more lucrative business enterprises. enter-prises. Handling regular shipments of ore from the Park City mine, and phosphate from the Stauffer plant on Highway 40, the cluttered freight office, manned for the past 25 years by agent F.T. Dearden, adds approximately $2 million per year to the coffers of the great UP. And business is expected to pick up. Increased coal mining activity in Coalville and greater ore production anticipated at the Ontario mine ten years ago, few people have reason to visit the depot. No one waits for trains anymore in Park City, but the benches in the cozy waiting room are kept dusted and painted. Sunlight pours in through colored glass onto a tidy floor and clean white walls as it did 80 years back. And photographs of the great Union Pacific Streamliners remind one of the days when train travel was a sumptuous adventure. The stained glass ticket windows win-dows are closed to the public now but on the other side schedules and prices still hang on the frame within an eyeshot of the agent. Although it is now filled with keys and a few draft cards lost in the 40's, the cash drawer easily large windows partially shaded by dark green blinds. In the center is a large desk which was at one time the daily responsibility of several men. Rubber stamps of all distinction are hung on the desk's many shelves, where notes still remind one that a Pullman ticket to Portland costs $17.70. The walls are covered all around with reports, official letters and memos; some dating back 50 years or more. There is no lack of places to rest in the freight office, and a variety .. " j. . .....,.;,-. wcj i? ' f t I 11 ' 1 s ! l ifss-i immm & fc-t . , '' -. f I :,:.v--.-. "- H .. si S-iik sSSfs -JpSWSWNiSK&i SSJSWWSSSj -jS&SS . v1 "'.r"' sik:-k-V;- - . $ I p II 3 .x ... i ' j jrpwj F8 Ip! s 't ::r lit i - 'U nTTTT : 1 Historic site marker rests inconspicuously next to the ticket window on the other side of the waiting room at the depot George Jones, Lawrence Paul and George Holmes remembered on the wall of the U.P. Depot , "' M ' .- '?- ' ' ' . , . r . . , . . - , . - . , - . - - . .wa.-V. J i r or a r r w f '. i ' r ' r - ' - - |