.

How long is the track there? A few thousand feet? Ever wish you had a little more?

Nice to see a tie made by hand, like the way it was...Shovel tamping.

"Ever wish you had a little more?"--Steven Harrod

I won't speak for the Golden Spike people (although my guess would be they think more track is more ties, rails, and spikes to look after), but I would bet Steven would like to see more, and I have to admit, I would too--along with accurate replicas of passenger cars, and a long ride by train to the site from both directions, making you feel like you were crossing the continent to a rendezvous with history. . .

http://americangallery.files.wordpress. ... ts-way.jpg

http://www.weareca.org/images/period04/ ... tinent.jpg

That would be cool...

I think the track at Promontory Summit is about 3/4 miles long with a wye into an engine house.

As a side note: Two of the cars that were at Promontory Summit back on that May day in 1869 are still with us in one shape or form.

The CP officer car appears to have been sold a few years later to a private individual and then sold to the Virginia & Truckee and then later rebuilt into a coach and later sold to one of the movie studios. As a coach it is now in the collection of the Nevada State RR Museum.

Three coaches for the CP were being delivered by rail and were being used to carry Army troops westward. The cars and the troops were at Promontory at day. The body of one of these cars has survived and is inside a wine shop in California's wine country.

Wonderful photo Josh, thanks for posting!

Stephen

.

Sadly, yes. The Promontory Branch (it became a branch when the Lucin Cutoff was built) was abandoned in 1938, and torn up in 1942. The rail was scattered across the country for military bases and defense depots.

What is there now was relaid by the National Park Service, which has no plans to extend it any further than it is now.

A while ago I started a thread on the Golden Spike Heritage Foundation, which owns the remainder of the grade from the east park boundary to the current end-of-track in Corrinne, as well as the Corrinne depot. Read here: http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33167 This group plans to relay as far as possible and run trains from either Corrinne or Brigham City, with bus shuttles to the park.

Thanks for the update, Josh. Promontory is a very special place. I've been there many times over the years, and always learn something new.

The locomotives interest me most, and research into the correct colors that Jupiter and 119 wore is still ongoing. Jim Wilke, one of our most knowledgeable historians regarding early steam power, posted this to the CPR Discussion Group in 2008:

In the 1970s, not much was known about the paint schemes of early locomotives, and both replicas were painted bright red. We now know that bright red locomotives were virtually nonexistent at the time.

In 1994, new research into early locomotive paint schemes, and a contemporary 1869 newspaper report describing Jupiter's colors as "blue and crimson with gold" led to their repainting. Jupiter's scheme was based on what was then known about blue locomotives, while the 119's scheme was largely hypothetical, but based on common practice at the time and additional research into photographs of the engine when new.

Today, ongoing research has brought new information that the NPS is incorporating into a study which will guide future repainting of the replica engines when funding allows. Jupiter's blue is now known to have been much darker, and the hypothetical 119 scheme was discovered to be, in fact, largely accurate.

The original locomotives were built at a time when engines were commercial products, and reflected the ideas and preferences of the factories that built them. Locomotive builders knew that attractive engines reflected well on their image, and accordingly chose individualistic "trademark" color schemes to promote their product.

Jupiter was built by the Schenectady Locomotive Works of New York State, whose Scottish management employed the blue and crimson colors of Scotland's Caledonian Railway – blue is the national color of Scotland. The same scheme was employed upon the banners of the largely Scottish 79th New York Volunteers, known as the "Highland Regiment." Blue and crimson was not only used by Schenectady, however, and the Brooks Locomotive Works and the Rogers Locomotive & Machine Works also turned out engines in various blue and red combinations.

The No. 119 was built by the Rogers Locomotive & Machine Works of New Jersey, which typically painted its engines either green or wine color with vermilion (a bright orange-red) wheels. Wine color was used for "better finish" engines like No. 119, usually with green or ultramarine blue panels on the tender and vermilion number panels, as well as gold striping on the tender and engine frames. Photographs of No. 119 clearly show the tender frame striped in gold, indicating that the engine was painted in wine. New information has also shown the actual placement of the panel colors on the tender, the reverse of their current positions.

Shortly after this info surfaced, I did a "quick and dirty" photoshop job on a couple of my photos to see how Jupiter would look in a darker blue, with drop-shadow tender lettering, and how 119 would look with the reversed green/crimson panels.

I think they look pretty nice this way.

Jeff Terry
(Who is looking forward to seeing Jupiter and 119 next Thursday)

Now those are some beautiful engines! You gotta love the bright colors that pop!

Later!
Mr. Ed

It's worth noting once again that Josh has the location correct: Promontory Summit. Thanks to an error that may be as old as 1869, many list this as incorrectly as Promontory Point. The problem with that is that there really is such a place and it's about 35 or so miles farther south on the peninsula that juts into the lake.

Note also that although one likes to imagine the tracks running east and west here they actually run northeast / southwest. Almost 45° from the cardinal directions.

Steve

My wife and I visited Promontory in 2001, a few days after the 9-11 attacks. It reminded us that the US is about building. I took a photo of an historical marker honoring the Chinese workers, and shared it with a colleague of Chinese ancestry. I also photographed the telegraph terminal pole, because I was a communictions technician--never worked on telegraph lines, but did have some experience with magneto-signalling (hand crank) telephones. After paying our respects to the Pacific Railroad project, we visited the Thiokol rocket booster plant a few miles away, where science fiction is turned into history.

Are the two locomotives the only rolling stock there? I saw a couple push carts off track in one of the videos, but no other cars of any type. Looking online, it appears that it's just the locomotives. I had always thought that it was a meeting of trains for the recreations, not just locomotives.

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA.

.