Union Pacific

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HWY 40, Donner Pass

Early on a Monday morning I drove to Historic Highway 40, around Donner Summit, to do some sketching.

I love this highway corridor, it’s full of deep California history (native, pioneer, railroad, and highway) as well as personal family history. My parents met at the South Bay Ski Club whose cabin is on Highway 40 near Soda Springs. Without this ski club I would not have come into being.

Historic indeed, there is so much depth of history here.

At the summit I sketched a former gas station. The station was used to fuel highway snow clearing equipment used to keep the highway open in the winter.

The Lamson Cashion Donner Summit Hub is where a lot of the threads of Donner Pass come together (hence the name). Just a short list of the points of interest in this general area are: the petroglyphs, Pacific Crest Trail, the Donner Summit Bridge (the Rainbow Bridge), west entrance of Summit Tunnel 6, central shaft of Tunnel 6, and the Donner Summit Trail.

The repurposed gas station is now an information center at the Lamson Cashion Donner Summit Hub.

I then headed down the pass and over the famed “Rainbow Bridge”. I was keeping my eyes (at least one eye) to my left, searching for the mass of rusted metal that has been here for about 75 years. There it was.

My father always pointed out this ominous artifact when we would summer here on the shores of Donner Lake. We were historic rubberneckers.

There it is, rusted and compacted by heavy snow loads for almost 75 years.

Highway 40, east of Donner Summit is treacherous, as the Donner Party found out when they attempted to scale the pass in 1846. It is also treacherous for auto traffic on the winding, wet, and icy roadbed while heading down grade.

The wreck that my father pointed out is the truck chassis that went over the roadway and settled on a granite shelf sometime in the 1950s. There is not a lot of information about the truck, just that it’s not the “Turkey Truck”. That’s a story for a different post!

I pulled over and found a boulder seat to sketch from using a brush pen to keep it loose and sketchy to the soundtrack of the cooling winds through the pine branches and a male Wilson’s warbler emphatically singing from those branches. I was in Sierra heaven (featured sketch).

After sketching I headed down 40 towards Donner Lake and the Southern Pacific Railroad historic town of Truckee.

Aside from SP’s iconic cab forward locomotives, no other piece of railroad equipment is as renowned as the rotary snowplow for conquering the grades and gales of Donner Summit.

The rotary plow kept the line open in the deepest winters. And the California State Railroad Museum donated Southern Pacific’s SPMW 210. This historic piece of rail equipment now is on static display alongside the tracks it once kept open in the winter time.

This monster could cut through heavy snow. I usually sketch these plows head on but I decided on a different perspective.

While I have sketched these plows many times before, I decided to try from a different angle with a broken continuous-line sketch.

A reminder, courtesy of Union Pacific, that Truckee still remains a rail town. The eastbound freight was an empty covered hopper consist. How do I know it’s empty? Motive power. Only two locomotives on point and one at the end. If the consist was fully loaded, they would need more motive power to travel over Donner Summit.
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Sketch Crockett

My Saturday morning sketch found me at the corner of Loring and Rolph Ave in the little corner park in Crockett.

Before me was the C & H factory with the Union Pacific mainline passing in front. To my left was the former Southern Pacific station (sketched on a previous Saturday) and is now a historical museum.

I planned to add my park perspective to my Stillman & Birn Delta panoramic journal. The factory is full of complicated angles and shapes as if the factory was built in stages and at different times (which it probably was). I employed a little sketcher’s shorthand to simplify the details.

In 1906 Crockett became “Sugar Town” when a cooperative of Hawaiian sugarcane growers bought a sugar beet factory and turned it into the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C & H). At the company’s peak, 95% of the town’s residents were C & H employees.

The southbound Coast Starlight No. 11 passes by the complex jumble of the C & H sugar factory at 8:01 AM.

Sketching the factory was a wonderful meditation, as it often is, turning chaos into order. I can think of few other pursuits that offers such satisfaction and peace of mind. I can almost feel my blood pressure drop when I put pen to paper.

Parkside sketching.

I employed a similar sketching techniques to past posts with putting a moving train in my sketch. I draw in the foreground and background and then add the train after it passes (usually from a photo reference).

Two GE P42DCs (No. 78 and 137) on point of the California Zephyr. Next stop: Martinez, final destination: Chicago, Illinois.

The passenger train I sketched into the scene was California Zephyr No. 6. I guess I should explain my fascination with AMTRAK’s longest daily route.

The Zephyr observation car crossing the entrance access to the C & H factory.

I have taken the Zephyr round trip twice, from Colfax, Ca to Denver, Co. The first time was for some Colorado birding and we where up in the Rocky Mountains at Loveland Pass looking for the elusive white-tailed ptarmigan.

It was here that I got a call from my mom and learned that my younger brother had died. I was leaving the next day from Union Station and it was a beautiful if not bittersweet rail journey.

The last trip I took with my stepdad was on the Zephyr and it was a great trip through one of the most scenic stretches of tracks in the United States. So whenever I see the Zephyr pass by, it puts a smile on my face.

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Crockett Sketching

On a Saturday morning I headed up to Sugar Town on the Carquinez Strait.

My sketching target: the former Crockett Southern Pacific Depot with the two parallel spans of the Carquinez Bridges in the background. The depot is now home to the Crockett Historical Museum. Open Wednesday and Saturday from 10am to 3pm. Ish!

This is a busy place for rail with seven trains passing by including a California Zephyr, a Coast Starlight, a San Joaquin, Capital Corridors, and a Union Pacific freight during my two hours visit.

Coast Starlight No. 11 passes by the C & H Factory to its final destination of Los Angeles’ Union Station. The train was running a little late. Shocker!

My sketching goal was to render the scene in a continuous line sketch. This means you never lift your pen for the entire sketch. No pencil, no erasing, no going back, this is truly sketching without a net!

Eastbound California Zephyr Number 6 passing the former SP Depot at 8:56 AM without stopping. Final destination: Chicago.

I set up my sketching chair across the street from the depot just at the entrance to the company that made Crockett a company town, the C & H (California & Hawaii) sugar factory. For my sketch I used my TWSBI Eco fountain pen.

Nothing like starting the weekend with a field sketch!

Continuous line sketching can be challenging and I lifted my pen off the page once or twice (to photograph Zephyr Number 6) but I restarted where I left off. So my sketch is really a broken continuous line sketch.

In the end I like the imperfect lines of the sketch. This technique is a great way to loosen up your line work and in the end I am pleased with the result. It may not be the most accurate form of sketching but it sure has a lot of soul!

I added some wet on wet washes and paint splatter, which looseness, matches the line work.

When the museum finally opened at 10:25, I was drawn to the large 460 pound taxidermy sturgeon in a glass case. So I added it to the right side of the spread.

Main Street Crockett with Toot’s bar and the new span of the 2003 Carquinez Bridge towering over the town.

The trains never stop rolling through Crockett. This is a Sacramento-bound Capital Corridor train passing the sugar factory.
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The National Museum of Transportation

There has been a museum on my sketch list for a long time and I used my fall break to finally visit it.

The National Museum of Transportation is in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, Missouri. The 42 acre museum was founded in 1944 and has a large collection of railroad history (and cars and planes).

The museum has it’s own railroad spur to the Union Pacific mainline (formerly Missouri Pacific Railroad) so the larger locomotives in its collection can be shipped on rail.

The railroad spur connecting the museum to the UP mainline.

I made up a sketch list before my visit and there were a lot of iconic locomotives to render in ink and watercolor.

I was going to be busy, very busy!

Visiting this museum is like having my favorite train book as a child, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of North American Locomotives by Brian Hollingsworth, come to life. As a child I thought: “I’d like to see that locomotive!” And now I was about to! In fact the museum has 13 iconic locomotives featured in this book. The reason I knew this museum even existed was the common refrain in the book, “now displayed at the Museum of Transportation at St. Louis, Missouri”.

One of the electric locomotives featured in the book is the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad’s Class EP-2. This is the only preserved unit in its class in existence.

I planned to spend a good deal of time on my Sunday visit at the museum sketching. I would do all the line work in the field and then add watercolor back at my hotel.

The museum has an amazing collection of large steam and diesel locomotives to sketch. One of those sketches completed the Norfolk & Western triad of A- Class, J-Class, and now Y-Class.

The N & W Y-Class was designed to haul long and heavy coal trains. While it is slightly smaller than Union Pacific’s Big Boys, the Y Class is more powerful than the UP articulated.

The NMOT is also one of the places to see a Union Pacific Big Boy. I have now seen and sketched four of the eight remaining Big Boys.

Freshly painted Big Boy No. 4006 with Centennial No. 6944 reflected in her black livery. This museum is one of the few places to see one of the largest diesels and largest steam locomotives displayed side-by-side.

While the Big Boy is a big draw to the museum, there is one locomotive that is the most loved and best known. This is the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (“Frisco”) No. 1522. This 4-8-2 Mountain type was built in 1926 by Baldwin. The locomotive logged over 1.7 million miles in passenger and freight service. She was restored to working order and was in excursion service from 1988 to 2002 around the Midwest, where many saw and rode behind her.

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Muir Trestle, Martinez

I was meeting a friend in the East Bay city of Martinez and I had a little time to sketch before lunch.

Martinez is a hotbed of railroading with both the Union Pacific and BNSF passing through as well as some marquee passenger trains such as the Coast Starlight and the California Zephyr making stops at the Martinez AMTRAK station. And the Capitol Corridor commuter takes on passengers traveling north and south on shorter journeys.

The California Zephyr Train No. 6, at the old Southern Pacific Depot in Martinez. This train is heading east to Chicago. To the right in the background is SP switcher 1258 on static display.

There would certainly be something to sketch here and I was going to start with a historic train trestle.

I parked at the Mount Walda Trailhead. Soaring above me was the 1,600 foot long steel Muir Trestle (aka the Alhambra Trestle). The single track trestle was so long that I could only see and sketch one section of it before it disappeared into the trees to the east. The trestle rises 75 feet above the roads, trees, and houses it crosses over.

A detailed view of the steel supports of the Muir Trestle.

The trestle is within the John Muir National Historic Site. To the north is Muir’s Martinez home. Muir and his wife Wanda sold the land for the trestle for $10 and a lifetime rail pass to the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway. The original wooden trestle was built through a pear orchard and completed in 1897.

This is a historic photograph of the Stengel-Muir ranch in 1897. The Muir house is on the top left and the trestle is viable behind the house. At the time of the photograph, the trestle was constructed of wood.

At the eastern end of the trestle there was a passenger and freight station named Muir Station. The station is now long gone but is immortalized in a street that parallels the rails named Muir Station Road.

From this station Muir could ship his produce to Oakland or to the port in Martinez.

One of Muir’s neighbors in the Alhambra Valley was John Swett, Muir close friend. Swett was the State Superintendent of Public Education and is known as the “Father of California Public School”.

In 1898, Santa Fe purchased the line and it became their Valley Division. This division still exists as BNSF’s route from Richmond to Fresno.

The Muir Trestle from the intersection of Alhambra Way and Muir Station Road.

I took up a sketching position near the trailhead and started my drawing. The trestle above me is on the Stockton subdivision and is used by BNSF intermodal freight. There was no train crossing during my sketch.

SP 0-6-0 switcher No. 1258 and its consist of a wooden box card and Santa Fe caboose 390 on display across the tracks from the AMTRAK station. The locomotive is in sad shape, missing some hardware like her bell and whistle.
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Keddie Wye

One of the Seven Marvels of the Feather River Route is to be found a few miles north of Quincey.

The Feather River Route, also known as the Canyon Subdivision, stretches between Oroville and Portola, Ca and competed with Southern Pacific’s route over the Sierras at Donner Pass.

The Marvel is known as the Keddie Wye. This is where two tracks comes together to form one track, looking like the letter “Y”. Now this in itself isn’t much to write home about but when both sides of the “Y” are on trestles above a creek that joins together before entering a tunnel and then you know this is a special piece of railroad engineering.

The two forks of the “Y” are also where two different railroads meet. On the right is the former Western Pacific Railroad, now Union Pacific, and one the left is the BNSF (Burlington Northern and Santa Fe).

After about a 45 minute drive from Portola on Highway 70, the famous Keddie Wye appeared to my right. I pulled over and found a vantage point to sketch. I perched on a narrow trail above Tunnel No. 32 looking out to the two forks of the wye.

Now the only thing missing was a freight train. It would have been nice to see a train traverse one side of the “Y”. As I was told at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum, Sunday is a quiet day on the high iron.

After my sketch (right side of the spread), I headed down Highway 70 into the Feather River Canyon proper. The Highway parallels the railroad and the Feather River. This is a beautiful drive and I periodically looked off to left at the rails across the river. No trains.

I was about 20 minutes from the wye when I heard the screech of steel wheels on rail. I looked to the left and a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) was climbing up the canyon with a mixed freight consist.

I found the nearest pullout and then reversed direction as I chased the BNSF up canyon. I wasn’t going to miss the freight on Keddie Wye!

As I climbed up Feather River Canyon I kept an eye to my right for glimpses of the train. I should have no problem overtaking the train as the line speed limit was 25-30 mph.

I soon came to the end of the train and before long I was approaching the five bright orange diesels on point. I passed them with time to spare.

Once I reached the wye I reversed direction again and parked at the pull out. I figured I was about ten to fifteen minutes ahead of the freight and I took my position on the narrow path above Tunnel 32. Now I had to just wait, wondering if I would be able to hear the approaching freight from my position.

Within ten minutes I could hear the diesels working up grade and the first locomotive appeared below me. The train headed onto the left side of Keddie Wye onto the BNSF Gateway heading north towards Lookout and Klamath Falls.

What a memorable experience to see a piece of railroad history that is not a static museum piece isolated in time but in use today.

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Western Pacific Railroad Museum

You really have to like trains to make it out to Portola, Ca. From my mom’s house it was a two hour drive over windy roads to reach the small town where the former diesel shops of the Western Pacific were.

These shops and the rails around it, are now the Western Pacific Railroad Museum. The museum is adjacent to the tracks of the Union Pacific which acquired the WP in 1982. Heading west from Portola you enter the Canyon Subdivision which is the WP’s Feather River Route. This is one of the most scenic sections of the the former WP. It was the route the original California Zephyr took from the Bay Area to Chicago.

The museum has four cars from the streamliner, the California Zephyr.

While many railroad museums focus on the age of steam, the WP was one of the first major railroads in the west to dieselize. The museum has 29 diesels in its collection.

The WP acquired its first diesel in 1939. The SW1 switcher was built by the Electro Motive Corporation for an original cost of $64,525. It was built to work in the yard and with a top speed of 45 MPH, it was not designed to be out on the mainline.

The WP tested out the diesel (No. 501) and liked what it could do. It later ordered two more sister locomotives and 14 years later the Western Pacific was completely dieselized. The genesis of WP’s diesel age is now part of the museum’s collection.

A sketch of some of the WPRM’s collection including WP’s first diesel: No. 501.

The museum has many classic, epic, and iconic diesel-electric locomotives in its collection and I added a few to my sketchbook.

An iconic locomotive is the WP 805-A. This is an EMD FP7. This hood unit was on point of the California Zephyr from Oakland to Salt Lake City. The diesel was in service on the Zephyr from 1950 to the route’s end in 1970.

805-A is the last WP California Zephyr locomotive in existence, so I had to sketch it.

One of the epic diesels in the museum’s collection is perhaps the most epic diesels ever built, this is Union Pacific No. 6946. This 6,600 horsepower behemoth is EMD Class DD40AX “Centennial”, the largest and most powerful diesel-electric locomotive ever built and is the successor of UP’s Big Boy. 6946 is the last (out of 47) Centennial ever built. Only 13 Centennials still exist, the large locomotives having been retired from the UP fleet in 1986.

The beast that is the last Centennial ever built. Like the Big Boy, it’s two locomotives smashed into one mighty powerful machine.

A docent told me I could climb aboard the duel engine workhorse and I walked along the gangway to the cab.

I liked the view so I sketched the 1953 diesel shop from the gangway of 6946 (featured sketch).

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4014 on the Mountain Sub

One of the legendary railroad routes is the section of the Transcontinental Railroad that climbs the western flank of the Sierra Nevada Mountains up to Donner Pass. The construction of the railroad was an engineering marvel and much of the original route is still in use.

Southern Pacific used their AC articulated cab-forwards to tackle the grades and heavy freight over the pass and now the world’s largest articulated locomotive would be climbing up to Donner Pass for the very first time. And I planned to be there.

There was a planned 30 minute whistle stop at the historic railroad town of Colfax at 11:15.

I was in Colfax an hour and a half before arrival and more and more people were streaming into town.

4014 left Roseville on time but was halted when the train hit a tree that had fallen near Auburn. The UP tracking app noted that 4014 was “currently stopped near Auburn”. At first I thought it was just a maintenance stop but then word spread that Big Boy had hit a tree and there was some damage to the underside. This was not good. Especially for the hundreds of people waiting in the heat for 4014 at Colfax.

Word spread that the locomotive might have to be towed back to Roseville. The train was now an hour late. I decided to head back to Penn Valley, to air conditioning and the second half of the European Cup Final. I would continue to monitor the UP tracking site. But I had to beat the heat in Colfax.

Just after the game ended (Spain was European champions for the fourth time), the tracker read, “4014 currently moving near Auburn”.

My plan was to drive on Highway 20 to where it merged with Highway 80. This was Yuba Pass and I wanted to see Big Boy in this historic location.

I arrived and there were plenty of other rail fans lining the tracks at Yuba Pass. This was a good sign because 4014 was still climbing the grade and had not reached my position.

After about a 45 minute wait a plume of steam exhaust appeared down line and the mighty roar of the Big Boy filled the cut.

Then the iconic articulated giant appeared working up grade towards my position near the signal gantry. 4014 was putting on a show that enveloped all the senses.

As 4014 rounded the curve, the articulated properties of the design were in full display. While the leading truck and front drivers rounded the curvature of the track the boiler remained rigid making it appear that the drivers and boiler were separating. Afterwards I did a spread to understand the articulation design (below).

After the train disappeared into the tunnel, I headed back to my car and was soon driving east on Highway 80. To my right, I could see the tell-tale exhaust up the hill on the railroad grade. Soon I was pacing with 4014 and I then pulled ahead and planned to head to Soda Springs to see the steam mammoth as she neared Donner Summit.

I made it to Soda Springs off Historic Highway 40 and the biggest challenge was finding a place to park as there were many people waiting trackside for the arrival of the Big Boy.

I found a parking spot and headed down to the grade crossing. There was a festive atmosphere around the tacks and to the south many Cal Fire trucks and personal (including Smokey) looked and listened down track for the first appearance of the 4-8-8-4.

4014 at Soda Springs.

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Overnighter in Roseville

4014 would be spending two nights in the important rail hub of Roseville.

Roseville is at the base of the climb up the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Donner Pass. It is here where the tools to conquer the Donner extreme winters are kept. Across the tracks, near the depot, the spreaders and flangers could be seen. A little further down the siding, the ultimate snow fighting machine could be seen: the rotary plows.

But on this July Friday and Saturday an army of foamers, rail fans, history buffs, and the curious would be invading the city of Roseville.

They were all here to see the largest steam locomotive in the world, Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014. For the two display days the largest operable locomotive would be static and not moving. The Goliath would be brought up to steam and boiler pressure to conquer the Sierra Nevadas on Sunday.

I arrived early on Saturday to find a parking spot and to spend some quality time with the 4-8-8-4 before she, or he, was besieged.

Roseville is a busy point on the railroad with many freight trains starting the climb or descending the Sierra Nevadas. The passenger service is alive and well in Roseville with the California Zephyr and the Capital Corridor stopping at the passenger depot.

The present and the past of Union Pacific freight. A eastbound freight passes 4014 at Roseville.

4014 now had a consist of Union Pacific passenger cars. I heard a ticket for the trip from Roseville to Reno, Nevada would set you back $700. The train was parked near the intersection of Atlantic and Vernon Streets near Southern Pacific’s 2252 and a rotary snowplow on display.

Roseville is a very busy point on the line and it was about to get much busier with the influx of people coming into town to see a Big Boy’s first visit.

I walked to the grade crossing at Yosemite Street and looked west (towards Sacramento) and sketched 4014 and the Roseville yard (featured sketch).

The viewing of 4014 officially opened at 9:00 AM and there was already a group lined up to get a closer look at the Big Boy.

As the clock ticked closer to 9:00 AM, more and more people were showing up to see the first visit of a Big Boy to Roseville.

This important railroad town was the home of Southern Pacific’s articulated, the cab forward. These massive locomotives were designed to haul freight over the pass and the locomotive was reversed with the cab in front (hence the name) so the crew would not suffer from smoke asphyxiation while traveling through the many tunnels and snow sheds on the route. In the age of steam Roseville had two roundhouses, one was specifically designed for servicing the labor intensive cab forwards. At one point Roseville was home to 60 cab forwards.

Only one Southern Pacific cab forward still exists, the AC-12 No. 4294. She is on static display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. But unlike Union Pacific’s 4014, 4294 is not operable.

Soon it was hard to see the Big Boy through the forest of people surrounding it. So I did a sketch to capture the experience.

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Signal Peak and the Southern Pacific Fire Lookout

On my latest sketching odyssey I headed to one my favorite locations in California, if not the world: Donner Pass.

Before I set out, I sketched the rail route of the East Slope of Donner Pass, heavily influenced by a map drawn by John Signor (author, artist, and former Southern Pacific employee) in his marvelous book: Donner Pass: Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing.

I would be driving parallel to the Central Pacific side of the first Transcontinental Railroad on Highway 80. In 1865 the railroad became Southern Pacific.

I was looking for a stone structure that was built in 1909 as a fire lookout and I reckoned that Cisco, which is directly across the valley from the building, would be my best position for seeing Southern Pacific’s fire lookout on Red Mountain.

The lookout on Red Mountain was built because, from this vantage point, the rail line from Blue Canon to Donner Summit could be observed. Because 50 miles of the trackage was above 5,000 feet in elevation, snow was a real problem for keeping the line open during the long winters. The solution was to build wooden snowsheds to keep snow off the tracks. Work on the snowsheds began in 1867 and the sheds were completed by 1873. In total, 30 miles of sheds where built.

The view from Donner Summit. On the right is the original rail bed of the Transcontinental Railroad. The east portal of the Summit Tunnel (Tunnel #6) and Tunnel #7 is beyond. The snowsheds are made of concrete, replacing the flammable wooden sheds. In the middle ground is Historic Highway 40 and in the background is Donner Lake.

When you combine wooden snowsheds with wood burning steam locomotives the result can be fire.

Southern Pacific employed fire trains that could be called into action to put out fires in the snowsheds but first someone had to observe the smoke. This is where the fire lookout came into play.

The fire lookout was in continuous use until 1934 when it was abandoned.

Before I got to Cisco, I pulled off Highway 20, just before it merges into Highway 80 at Yuba Pass. From here I looked down the line and just above the signal gantry was Signal Peak and to the right I spotted the prominent silhouette of the fire lookout.

Yuba Pass with Red Mountain and Signal Peak in the background.

I headed east on 80 for one stop, I took the Cisco exit which just a service station stop. I pulled behind a parked truck and looked to the northeast across the highway.

Behind me, further up the hill was the mainline. In front of me was Red Mountain and Signal Peak. To the right was antennas and towers, to the left was the Southern Pacific fire lookout.

Red Mountain and Signal Peak.

Now it was time for a sketch using my Delta panoramic journal (featured sketch) to capture the peak.

Close up of the Southern Pacific stone lookout built in 1909 and used until 1934.

I returned to Yuba Pass to get a sketch of Red Mountain from this perspective. The signal on the gantry was green so an eastbound freight was imminent. Before long I could hear the rumble of a Union Pacific intermodal freight train climbing the grade towards Donner Summit. This consist contained six locomotives and I lost count of how many cars it train contained. (In truth I didn’t attempt to count. Seeing this long freight train mean less truck traffic on America’s highways).

What follows is a series of photographs of the UP freight making the climb to Donner Pass with Signal Peak in the background.