Cheyenne 1869 extension

[mrennie]

I've just had another quick look at the report written by Robert L. Spude for the NPS in 2005 and in his "Chronology: The Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads" he says (quote):

April 10, 1869 Joint Resolution of Congress fixes point of union of rails at summit of railroad pass through Promontory Range, but provides for purchase of Union Pacific line, Promontory – Ogden, by Central Pacific. Ogden to be
junction
...
May 10, 1869 Last Spike ceremony. UP decides not to remove from Promontory Summit, which becomes UP-CP junction.

May 11-12, Crews build yards at Promontory; transcontinental railroad opens for service. Promontory City arises. No water found to support trains; water trains come from Corinne and Blue Creek or Kelton on Indian Creek.

June 1869 Chief Engineers Dodge, UP, and Montague, CP, meet and start rebuilding yard to improve operations; CP builds wood frame station that summer

Aug 30, 1869 Western Union completes line north of Salt Lake via Promontory

Sept, 1869 Government commission reports on railroad construction deficiencies, far less than rumored. Meeting of UP and CP officials at Promontory without a decision about moving junction UP builds station/eating house/hotel at Promontory

Nov 17, 1869 Agreement, UP and CP, to relocate junction from Promontory to Ogden

Nov 21, 1869 Vigilantes clean out Promontory City

Dec. 1, 1869 Transfer of Promontory Station and line to Ogden from UP to CP

Dec 6, 1869 First scheduled CP passenger train passes through Promontory to Ogden, and junction with UP trains

So it seems that Promontory was the junction for a few months right after the Golden Spike ceremony, but by December it was as you say, with the CP going all the way to Ogden.

Page 47 has a couple of very interesting photographs taken by Andrew J. Russell in November 1869 showing the railroad eating house (which opened in September), UP ticket and telegraph office and, in the distance, the CP yards.

[philmoberg]

... It is likely that freight started interchanging earlier, but I have not seen evidence that that happened en masse until the 1880s either ...

I can add a little more to this. Apparently the UP was accepting foreign road cars in interchange from the establishment of a semi-permanent crossing at Omaha in January of '68. The first coast-to-coast shipment, a carload Ames tools, reached Sacramento on or about July 9 (IIRC). This would not have been the first such load on UP tracks, the Ames brothers being deeply involved in the UP. Interestingly, these were probably shipped in Boston & Worcester cars, the Boston & Albany not having been formed until 1870.

I have run across a couple of accounts of Pullman service running through to Sacramento for some six months, maybe longer, in mid-'69. It is said this ended over a dispute with CP over their Silver Palace cars. The short version of the long story is that the dispute forced passengers to change trains at Ogden, and that was the end of that. It isn't clear whether CPRR "threw the first punch." My sense is that the history was complicated, and nobody's hands were clean. I've found this to be true of history, in general.

(Edit for spelling.)

[trainboi1]

Phil,
Thanks for the info. It doesn't entirely surprise me that freight interchange would happen relatively quickly, but I hadn't heard evidence of it before.
As far as early Pullman service, I had to take the time and dig up my copy of John White's American Railroad Passenger Car, which, while still a human product, sheds a good deal of light on the story. Apparently Pullman and Woodruff were competing for transcontinental sleeper contracts as early as 1867; the terms of both contracts ended with each road operating its own sleeper service. The first CP Silver Palace car entered service in July 1869 - not exactly six months after the line was completed, but two months is not nothing. It may also be that interchange continued for a limited time while the car was being tested, and only ended when word came out that CP had ordered its own fleet. Certainly Pullman didn't give up right away - once his private car P. P. C. was built in 1877, it almost immediately headed west, and wound up being reportedly the first sleeping car to travel to Virginia City after the CP refused to interchange its sleepers with the V&T (Perhaps this was also in part to try to outshine the luxury of Darius Ogden Mills' private car, which was built a year or two prior under Woodruff patent as the ultimate in luxury).
In any case, it wouldn't be likely to see day coaches interchanging between the two roads, but it's far from impossible. We can start mixing passenger stock between the two roads if I ever actually get around to importing my (as yet interior-less) UP and Pullman sleeping cars into the game, unless someone else gets there first.

[philmoberg]

I had commented without my references at hand, based on research I did a couple of years ago. It doesn't surprise me that I may have gotten the timing off with respect to the sleeping cars. I knew of Woodruff's disputes, as well as Wagner's, which were well-known to an earlier generation of rail historians here in the Northeast, primarily because of the involvement of the NYC&HR. What I do remember from the UP/CP dispute is that, at least initially, all passenger traffic ended up changing at Ogden, so this would tend to confirm your conclusion that the two lines weren't interchanging passenger cars. If I can get my hands on my source material today, I'll look the whole thing up again and see what I find.

BTW, I was in such haste when I posted yesterday that I neglected to thank you for posting your amazing work. I'm thoroughly impressed.

[M0T0RM4N]

don't take it too seriously - we only have so much stock to use here, so it's more important to use what is available than to use nothing at all.

All this really means for me is CPRR won't appear on the route if I write my own scenarios. However, that shouldn't stop other scenario makers from doing it their own way. I just like to have an understanding of what makes the most sense realistically when making a scenario. Your point stands, it can't be 100 percent.

Seriously though, that was quite an answer! Thank you!

[Vadim]

Hello! Is there any information on this wonderful route? There was no news for a very long time.

[talbenziman]

Hello! Is there any information on this wonderful route? There was no news for a very long time.

http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/d ... collection
http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/d ... collection

[Vadim]

Hello! Is there any information on this wonderful route? There was no news for a very long time.

http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/d ... collection
http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/d ... collection

What about Extension Carbon?