Kinda OT: TransContinental RailRoad...

[Buck Elliott]

Today marks the anniversary of the spanning of the nation by iron rail...

On this day, in 1869, the final spike was driven at Promontory Summit, in remote NW Utah, completing years of work on a transcontinental railroad, The ceremony marked the official uniion of the Union Pacific, out of Omaha Nebraska, and the Central Pacific, from Sacramento, California. The telgraph line was tapped, and A "Golden" spike was wired and set in a predrilled hole in a myrtlewood tie, and Gov. Leland Stanford of California then took a similarly-wired spike maul and swung at the ceremonial spike --- and MISSED... An excited telegrapher nonetheless tapped out D O N E, and the national tie became official.

Neither company knew for sure where the union would take place, and so surveyed and graded miles of parellel roadbed in bothe directions. Eventually, the Eastern terminus of the CP was located in Ogden, where a large yard was built, and interchange with the UP was accomplished.

[Ray Newman]

Several yeras ago, I read a book on the building of the transcontinental rr. I believe it was "Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869" by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Great book as it decsribed the challenges involved. If I recall correctly, some predicted that it would take 10 years just to go over and through California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the time to complete the whole project was unkown -- if it could be done at all!

[PaperPatch]

A few years ago during my Westward travels, I stood upon that very point at Promontory where the Golden Spike was driven. To get to that remote locale there in Utah...I had to drive past the Morton Thiokol facility where among other things; the Space Shuttle Boosters are manufactured and tested.

Reflecting backwards now....encountering those two sites within a few miles of each other, seems to represent an extreme contrast in the way mankind travels.

[Blaine]

Interest in the Railroad seems to spike on this date......

[Don McDowell]

And now both lines are owned and operated by the Union Pacific....
During my time of indentured servitude with the UP signal dept. I painted all the signals from Altamont (east of Evanston) to Riverdale, (south side of Ogden) Was a pretty nice way to spend the months of July and August,altho I was pretty sick and tired of Aluminum and flat black paint by the time I got done ......

[Buck Elliott]

Interest in the Railroad seems to spike on this date......

OoooooooKay...!?!

When I was somewhat younger, it was possible to drive up the old right-of-way, from Lampo Spring, at the base of the Promontory Range, all the way to the monument site, and then westward, for miles beyond.

In the early days of Iron Horse travel over that route, various Indian raiding parties would hide out along the road, between the Spring and the summit. CP trains were forced to stop at Lampo to take on water for the climb, and then for the run across the desert, north of the Great Salt Lake, to Montello, Nevada, where the next reliable water source lay. (sometimes they could take on water at Kelton, or at Watercress, depending on the season and the weather...) It was slow business laboring up the grade from Lampo to the crest of the hill, starting from a dead stop like that. Raiders found no lack of opportunity to besiege the slow moving trains, sometimes forcing them to stop on the hill, but usually just being an inconvenient bother. Now & then, they would catch the trains, and leap from their ponies onto the cars, doing their best Jesse James imitations when they could force their way in to passenger cars -- robbing and plundering at will.

It was never feasible to stop and restart a train on that grade -- meaning that it had to be backed down the track to Lampo and given another run from the short flat between the spring and the beginning of the grade...

As a result of the running battles fought on that stretch of rail, it was not unusual to find any number of spent bullets, cartridge cases, and stone or iron arrow points among the crushed stone of the roadbed, or scattered along the hillside, either side of the old track. Once upon a time, I had a respectable collection of such artifacts. Who knows what happened to all of it...?!?

Now, all that area on the east side of the hill is included in the national Monument, and such "collecting" is strictly forbidden.

After the great trestle across the lake was finished, from the east shore of the lake (west of Corrine...), to Promontory Point and then on to Lakeside, the track fell into disrepair, and was finally abandoned, to be torn up during the early days of WWII to salvage the steel for the wartime effort. The roadbeds are still very visible, including a couple of large "fills" across gullies, adjacent to butresses for trestles built by the other railroad to cross the same gullies.

[Buck Elliott]

A few years ago during my Westward travels, I stood upon that very point at Promontory where the Golden Spike was driven. To get to that remote locale there in Utah...I had to drive past the Morton Thiokol facility where among other things; the Space Shuttle Boosters are manufactured and tested.

Reflecting backwards now....encountering those two sites within a few miles of each other, seems to represent an extreme contrast in the way mankind travels.

At different times in past lives, I worked for both the Southern Pacifc RailRoad AND Thiokol Chemical Corporation, having my hand in both modes of transportation. I was at Thiokol when the first HUGE shuttle boosters were built and tested.

I had nothing to do with the O-rings...!!!

[Blaine]

Interest in the Railroad seems to spike on this date......

OoooooooKay...!?!

When I was somewhat younger, it was possible to drive up the old right-of-way, from Lampo Spring, at the base of the Promontory Range, all the way to the monument site, and then westward, for miles beyond.

In the early days of Iron Horse travel over that route, various Indian raiding parties would hide out along the road, between the Spring and the summit. CP trains were forced to stop at Lampo to take on water for the climb, and then for the run across the desert, north of the Great Salt Lake, to Montello, Nevada, where the next reliable water source lay. (sometimes they could take on water at Kelton, or at Watercress, depending on the season and the weather...) It was slow business laboring up the grade from Lampo to the crest of the hill, starting from a dead stop like that. Raiders found no lack of opportunity to besiege the slow moving trains, sometimes forcing them to stop on the hill, but usually just being an inconvenient bother. Now & then, they would catch the trains, and leap from their ponies onto the cars, doing their best Jesse James imitations when they could force their way in to passenger cars -- robbing and plundering at will.

It was never feasible to stop and restart a train on that grade -- meaning that it had to be backed down the track to Lampo and given another run from the short flat between the spring and the beginning of the grade...

As a result of the running battles fought on that stretch of rail, it was not unusual to find any number of spent bullets, cartridge cases, and stone or iron arrow points among the crushed stone of the roadbed, or scattered along the hillside, either side of the old track. Once upon a time, I had a respectable collection of such artifacts. Who knows what happened to all of it...?!?

Now, all that area on the east side of the hill is included in the national Monument, and such "collecting" is strictly forbidden.

After the great trestle across the lake was finished, from the east shore of the lake (west of Corrine...), to Promontory Point and then on to Lakeside, the track fell into disrepair, and was finally abandoned, to be torn up during the early days of WWII to salvage the steel for the wartime effort. The roadbeds are still very visible, including a couple of large "fills" across gullies, adjacent to butresses for trestles built by the other railroad to cross the same gullies.

Spike, as in Golden Spike?

[Buck Elliott]

Interest in the Railroad seems to spike on this date......

OoooooooKay...!?!

When I was somewhat younger, it was possible to drive up the old right-of-way, from Lampo Spring, at the base of the Promontory Range, all the way to the monument site, and then westward, for miles beyond.

In the early days of Iron Horse travel over that route, various Indian raiding parties would hide out along the road, between the Spring and the summit. CP trains were forced to stop at Lampo to take on water for the climb, and then for the run across the desert, north of the Great Salt Lake, to Montello, Nevada, where the next reliable water source lay. (sometimes they could take on water at Kelton, or at Watercress, depending on the season and the weather...) It was slow business laboring up the grade from Lampo to the crest of the hill, starting from a dead stop like that. Raiders found no lack of opportunity to besiege the slow moving trains, sometimes forcing them to stop on the hill, but usually just being an inconvenient bother. Now & then, they would catch the trains, and leap from their ponies onto the cars, doing their best Jesse James imitations when they could force their way in to passenger cars -- robbing and plundering at will.

It was never feasible to stop and restart a train on that grade -- meaning that it had to be backed down the track to Lampo and given another run from the short flat between the spring and the beginning of the grade...

As a result of the running battles fought on that stretch of rail, it was not unusual to find any number of spent bullets, cartridge cases, and stone or iron arrow points among the crushed stone of the roadbed, or scattered along the hillside, either side of the old track. Once upon a time, I had a respectable collection of such artifacts. Who knows what happened to all of it...?!?

Now, all that area on the east side of the hill is included in the national Monument, and such "collecting" is strictly forbidden.

After the great trestle across the lake was finished, from the east shore of the lake (west of Corrine...), to Promontory Point and then on to Lakeside, the track fell into disrepair, and was finally abandoned, to be torn up during the early days of WWII to salvage the steel for the wartime effort. The roadbeds are still very visible, including a couple of large "fills" across gullies, adjacent to butresses for trestles built by the other railroad to cross the same gullies.

Spike, as in Golden Spike?

Yeah... I got it from the start...

[jnyork]

We visited the site last year and it was well worth the effort. There is a nice little museum there that is quite educational, plus the Park Service runs two steam locomotives that are exact replicas of the two that were present at the driving of the golden spike. These were built from scratch back in the 1970's, I found it very interesting that because no engineering drawings remain, the drawings had to be recreated using photos of the day. This was done by a university out in California, Park Service specified everything had to be +/- 1/4 inch, how they do this from photos must be a real trick, I would like to see how they do it. They even got the colors by studying the old B/W photos. Pretty tricky.

[Blaine]

Even more, what a land surveying feat....when they started to get close, they found they only had to adjust by a very little bit....astounding, especially if you look at some of the section surveys by BLM back in the day. Those section cors were off by hundreds of yards sometimes.

[Hobie]

Interest in the Railroad seems to spike on this date......

OoooooooKay...!?!

When I was somewhat younger, it was possible to drive up the old right-of-way, from Lampo Spring, at the base of the Promontory Range, all the way to the monument site, and then westward, for miles beyond.

In the early days of Iron Horse travel over that route, various Indian raiding parties would hide out along the road, between the Spring and the summit. CP trains were forced to stop at Lampo to take on water for the climb, and then for the run across the desert, north of the Great Salt Lake, to Montello, Nevada, where the next reliable water source lay. (sometimes they could take on water at Kelton, or at Watercress, depending on the season and the weather...) It was slow business laboring up the grade from Lampo to the crest of the hill, starting from a dead stop like that. Raiders found no lack of opportunity to besiege the slow moving trains, sometimes forcing them to stop on the hill, but usually just being an inconvenient bother. Now & then, they would catch the trains, and leap from their ponies onto the cars, doing their best Jesse James imitations when they could force their way in to passenger cars -- robbing and plundering at will.

It was never feasible to stop and restart a train on that grade -- meaning that it had to be backed down the track to Lampo and given another run from the short flat between the spring and the beginning of the grade...

As a result of the running battles fought on that stretch of rail, it was not unusual to find any number of spent bullets, cartridge cases, and stone or iron arrow points among the crushed stone of the roadbed, or scattered along the hillside, either side of the old track. Once upon a time, I had a respectable collection of such artifacts. Who knows what happened to all of it...?!?

Now, all that area on the east side of the hill is included in the national Monument, and such "collecting" is strictly forbidden.

After the great trestle across the lake was finished, from the east shore of the lake (west of Corrine...), to Promontory Point and then on to Lakeside, the track fell into disrepair, and was finally abandoned, to be torn up during the early days of WWII to salvage the steel for the wartime effort. The roadbeds are still very visible, including a couple of large "fills" across gullies, adjacent to butresses for trestles built by the other railroad to cross the same gullies.

Spike, as in Golden Spike?

At least he didn't rail about your pun...

[Alan Wood]

We visited the site last year and it was well worth the effort. There is a nice little museum there that is quite educational, plus the Park Service runs two steam locomotives that are exact replicas of the two that were present at the driving of the golden spike. These were built from scratch back in the 1970's, I found it very interesting that because no engineering drawings remain, the drawings had to be recreated using photos of the day. This was done by a university out in California, Park Service specified everything had to be +/- 1/4 inch, how they do this from photos must be a real trick, I would like to see how they do it. They even got the colors by studying the old B/W photos. Pretty tricky.

They probably also had basic dimensions of the engines from historical records. That is wheel diameter (nominal), wheel location, piston diameter etc etc.

[Blaine]

In the early fifties (my sister was in a baby seat) Mom said we took a steam line from Columbus, Ohio to her hometown of Cambridge. She wanted to ride the old train once more before the shut it down. I barely remember it, but I remember the Black Porter bringing me treats and glasses of water. I remember the whistle, bell and the "Alllllll Aboard".....wish I had been older. For your perusal:

http://www.columbusrailroads.com/images ... _guide.pdf

[Hobie]

We have a lot of rail and steam fans here.

[Peter M. Eick]

Last summer I spent a big chunk of it exploring for oil around Creston Junction in Wyoming. We had the original 1868 grade running right through our project so it is now an archeological site. I can say I have now walked about 30 miles of the original grade looking at it. I found many sites where folks camped and things that fell off those old trains. It was quite interesting.

Later the Lincoln highway went right down the track as the UPRR moved it in 1880 and in 1892 then again in 1900 to its current final grade. The fascinating thing is how many re-alignments there were and how hard it was to sort out which ones had to be protected and which ones did not. I had a small army of archelogists helping me sort this out as I was the project manager.

I spent many a hour out there just listening to my crew on the radio and thinking about those old trains and all of the folks that passed down them.

Oh, and to Frank Yort, who died out there on Creston back in Aug 20, 1900. I still think about you occasionally. You may be gone now 110 years and have no relatives that I could find, but the Surveyors and I still remember you.

Oh and for any of you that want to see mainline steam on the UPRR. I shot this one and 3 other videos out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILKnc-feKbU

[JerryB]

Thanks for the write up and I sure did enjoy that old steam engine highballing.

[Tycer]

Clive Cussler wrote a fun read on the Railroads during that time period.

The Wrecker

[KSRtrd]

I was near Henderson Nevada when that Perchlorate factory got unhinged thinkin it was 1988. That was a explosion! Beleive it was a worker smoking whole brewing that stuff.

[piller]

And, the building of the railroad spawned several terms added to our language. Hell On Wheels originally referred to the railroad cars which followed the tracklayers. These cars had every kind of sin available at the time, and helped relieve the tracklayers of much of their pay. The area became known first as Hell Town, but because it was on wheels and could follow the track as it was put down, it became known as Hell on Wheels. This term came to be used for many other things, such as in western novels if someone was described as Hell on Wheels with a revolver, he was very fast on the draw and accurate when he shot. Hell on Wheels in a fistfight meant the man could fight and fought hard.

I am still amazed at what the engineers who surveyed and mapped the route on the go did. The people who blasted the the tunnels for the trains were amazing, too. Think about the difficulty in using the dynamite when you wanted to bust up only a certain area, and couldn't know the fracture lines in the rock beyond you. Quite a feat. And they did it all without the help of environmental activists and the E.P.A., amazing.

[Buck Elliott]

If the project were to ba attempted today, the EPA would never let the builders turn one shovelful of dirt...