Westward 2014: Promontory

145 year, 3 months, and 24 days ago the Transcontinental Railroad was joined. Promontory Summit, Utah was the place to be! But get this it wasn’t planned, not really. You see due to the fact that Congress hadn’t given solid instructions on where to meet the two companies just kept building. They were spurred on by the fact that they got paid for building more track. This meant they over shot each other by 250 miles. And Promontory was chosen to be the place for them to meet.

So I’d assume they did what they had been doing and laid track till they met. And there was a ceremony on 10 May 1869 where the last spike was driven (by Leland Stanford the president of the Central Pacific Railroad) and the Union Pacific’s No. 119 and the Central Pacific’s Jupiter high fived…. Okay so they touched cowcatchers and everyone gathered for a pictures.

Why was this such a huge deal? Well anyone who’s gone through middle school has had the pleasure of learning about the Transcontinental Railroad. But here’s a little run down to refresh your memory. Railroads were gaining popularity in the east for travel and shipping of goods. Two routes were brought to the attention of congress for the possibility of building the Central Route (Omaha to Sacramento) or the Southern Route (across Texas to Los Angeles). The Central route was chosen, fun fact it was pretty close to the Oregon Trail path, hey it worked for pioneers why not the railroad? So President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad act into law in 1862. This law set up the two companies and gave them land to build on. It also set out the wages. They would be paid per mile of track and paid more for track built in mountains versus the plains. The Central Pacific had the task of going through the Sierra Nevada’s, which meant most of the time the only way to progress was to blast their way through the mountains. Their high tech blasting technique allowed them to blast about one foot a day. The longest tunnel they built was 1659 feet long but there were a total of 15. Talk about time consuming. At least they didn’t have to deal with Native Americans, that was the Union Pacific’s lot. The Natives would raid the work sites and cause trouble, totally justified might I add because the land the government “granted” the railroad was in fact the native’s land. The 1,776 miles of tracks were built by the Irish who fought in the Civil War (Union Pacific), Mormon workers (in Utah) and Chinese immigrants (Central Pacific).

Let’s talk about the tracks for a second.

The ones on the left are the Central Pacific track style. Since there weren’t mills about they cut their own tracks see how they were pointed at the end. And the ones on the right are the Union Pacific style where they were able to use pretty ones freshly milled just for them. And that one in the middle is this….

Just a fancy one for the park.

And in that picture just to the left of the fancy tie in the ground there is a spike. Apparently it’s just inches from where the original golden spike was driven in. If you want to know more about the spikes… spikes, there were four of them check out the pamphlet on them here.

The trains.

Jupiter

No.119

Now I thought the trains were really bad a**. Why? Because they are replicas of the originals. Now they didn’t have any blueprints of these engines so the guy who commissioned them got together with smart train people and they looked at pictures and other engines of the time to recreate these bad boys. And they’re not just pretty faces…

They actually work!!

You actually get to climb in them and have a look about if you want.

It was hot. Like boiling. Hahaha. Train fun facts! So the Union Pacific ran on coal since that was an abundant resource in the east. And around the coal bin is where they house the water. You’d think thousands of gallons would tide the engine over for a while. Nope they had a range of about 30 miles. And as the one engineer pointed out if you looked at the old west there would be towns every 30 or so miles. Because there would be water station and the town would build up around it. The Central Pacific ran on wood since that was easy enough to get there. But they too had the same water issue. As you can see in the pictures they have the two different stacks. The UP is lacking the cone because they covered mostly flat plains and fires I suppose weren’t a concern. While the CP has the funnel at the top to keep embers from causing forest fires. And here’s the ultimate fun part. So before the railroad it would cost at least a thousand dollars and weeks to cross the states. The railroad made it possible to traverser the U.S. in about a week for as low as $65 or $136 if you wanted to go first class. The top speed of these trains was about 35 miles an hour. Which for back in the day was fast. More fun train stories can be found here. Like if you want to know why Jupiter and the No. 119 weren't the trains that were supposed to be at Promontory. Or why the original celebration date of May 8^th was moved to May 10^th.

And that’s Golden Spike National Historic Site with a side of history! A few more pictures of the ride to and from because I’m still not over the mountains here.

Cheers,