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Parking passes for the May 10 celebration are gone; for May 11 and 12, very limited. Trains: Jim Wrinn PROMONTORY SUMMIT, Utah — If you don’t already have a parking pass for Golden Spike ceremony’s 150th anniversary celebrations next month, better buy one immediately or schedule your visit to the Golden Spike National Historical Park […]
Chinese workers load rail onto a tracklaying car from the piles left by the morning’s supply train. Sixteen rails, a keg of spikes, a keg of nuts and bolts, and 32 splice bars, along with the crew made the load. Horses to pull the car stand ready. The location is Granite Point, Nev., in late […]
Grading on the Central Pacific was done by hand, relying primarily on Chinese using picks, shovels, and horse-drawn dump carts, though black powder was freely used to break hard soil and move rocks aside. This scene is the 170-foot deep excavation at Prospect Hill, Calif. It dates from summer 1866, when more than a thousand […]
A track worker hammers in spikes on a turnout. Steve Smedley Rusty track spikes near Canadian Pacific tracks at Brookfield, Wis, in 2012. Karl Riek The Golden Spike of the first transcontinental railroad was but one of millions in the nearly 2,000-mile route between Sacramento, Calif., and Omaha, Neb. Spikes date back to the first […]
Notable U.S. and Canadian railroad completions Trains: Rick Johnson Promontory Summit, Utah, may have hosted North America’s most famous final-spike ceremony, but the event on May 10, 1869, was not unique. Not all railroads had a completion “moment:” the New York Central is an example of a railroad formed through a series of mergers and […]
Railroad spike diagram Rick Johnson SPIKE dimensions are precise and have been set by such groups as the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association for decades. Spikes are made of relatively low-carbon steel, which is softer than the steel used in rail and spike mauls. This is important because when a spike is driven, it […]
OGDEN, Utah — Visitor estimates for this northern railroad center’s 150th anniversary celebration of the Golden Spike are “in the tens of thousands.” For railfans exhausted after days of train chasing and photography, Ogden offers four days of historically-themed activities, time to charge camera batteries, and an opportunity to learn about the glorious events of […]
Workers who built the first Transcontinental Railroad, by hand, in the late 1860s labored through grueling heat, biting winter cold, snow, attacks from Native American tribes, and long, long work days. Learn how they did it with this excerpt from one of Trains’ newest DVD’s, Journey To Promontory, available from the Kalmbach Hobby Store. […]
Workers who built the first Transcontinental Railroad, by hand, in the late 1860s labored through grueling heat, biting winter cold, snow, attacks from Native American tribes, and long, long work days. Learn how they did it with this excerpt from one of Trains’ newest DVD’s, Journey To Promontory, available from the Kalmbach Hobby Store. EXCERPT TRANSCRIPT: Dave Seidel, […]
CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ENLARGE THE MAP California to Nevada Nevada to Utah Utah to Wyoming Wyoming to Nebraska Nebraska to Iowa The first Transcontinental Railroad was a monumental undertaking by the time workers finished it in 1869. Today, tourists and enterprising photographers can visit much of what American ancestors left behind 150 years […]
Union Pacific Railroad as of 2019 The original Transcontinental Railroad route was the combined efforts of two railroads: the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. By 2019, 150 years after joining their rails at Promontory Summit, Utah, only the Union Pacific remains. Union Pacific operates along much of the original Transcontinental Railroad route between Sacramento, […]
Map of Sherman Hill on Union Pacific: one of the Transcontinental Railroad’s challenging obstacles Sherman Hill is one of the imposing physical challenges from the building of the first Transcontinental Railroad that remains a challenge today. In this map, see what Sherman Hill is like from an operations point-of-view for Union Pacific. Only from Trains! […]
