Calling All Zephyr Fans!

If this weekend's storms dump the predicted load on the Sierra Nevadas, looks like it'll be winter wonderland time over the pass. Not sure I'd chance it during the storms:



1952

Prior commitments prevent me from making the ride right now, but oh man what a cool jaunt between, say, Sacramento and Reno!

WhoozOn1st999 said:

If this weekend's storms dump the predicted load on the Sierra Nevadas, looks like it'll be winter wonderland time over the pass. Not sure I'd chance it during the storms:

1952

Prior commitments prevent me from making the ride right now, but oh man what a cool jaunt between, say, Sacramento and Reno!

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I remember that shot well. That is the "City of San Francisco". It was stranded for a couple of days. TRAINS Magazine had a great article on it called "The Case of the Stranded Streamliner".

The City of San Francisco was a train which was operated jointly by the Chicago and North Western, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific lines. A companion secondary train on the same route was the "Overland". The City was similar in many ways to the California Zephyr. They were, in fact, competitors with each other for some portions of the CHI-SF route.

Today, the CZ uses this same track shown in the photo for its western leg. But back then the CZ went from Salt Lake City to San Francisco via the Feather River Canyon on the Western Pacific Railroad.

A third competitor to those trains, begun about 1954, was Santa Fe's "San Francsico Chief". Its route sort of began the same way back East as todays SWC, but at the western end did not go through territory like this..

Bill Haithcoat said:

I remember that shot well. That is the "City of San Francisco". It was stranded for a couple of days. TRAINS Magazine had a great article on it called "The Case of the Stranded Streamliner".

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Here's a great writeup of the incident, with a second photo (a long shot of the whole train, or at least the roof and top half of the whole train...).

That article says it was a full three days that 224 passengers were stranded on the train (and that after the first 36 hours, fuel was gone and the train was in darkness). And of course nobody had any sort of means of communication with the outside world.

Thank you Mr. Haithcoat for the photo details, and thank you wayman for the story link. For any easy, I mean CZ, riders, keep your eyes peeled around Roseville - a number of rotaries still parked around.

I have a Pentrex video of railroad operations over Donner Pass. Part of the video goes into how the railroad is able to keep operations going even during times of heavy snow. It is fascinating to watch how they able to remove the snow and keep the lines open.

JayPea said:

I have a Pentrex video of railroad operations over Donner Pass. Part of the video goes into how the railroad is able to keep operations going even during times of heavy snow. It is fascinating to watch how they able to remove the snow and keep the lines open.

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I believe I've seen this video, or at least a very similar one. My fave part was when all else failed (a shot of a spreader arm bent backwards) the railroad (SP in the video) called on the Ultimate Weapon:



THE ROTARY!!

I believe they did use the rotary in the video. I saw a rotary in action one time, nearly 40 years ago. The area where we lived in Eastern Washington had a terrible winter that year, and I had a friend whose dad was the depot agent in the tiny town where we lived. (A branch line of the UP ran through our town). One Sunday, my friend called and told me the rotary was going to be making a run through our town. So my dad decreed I was "sick" and thus would miss Sunday School to watch the rotary, as the rail line ran right past our back yard. And, after it passed, we jumped in Dad's pickup and raced to the crossing near where my grandparents lived and watched it clear the crossing. The rotary had sat, unused, in the UP rail yards in Spokane for more than 20 years before being pressed into service that day. One of the thrills of my childhood!

Here's a great video of one in action two years ago on the UP:

Two Decembers ago in Colorado, TX, and even NM plains, we used rotaries which is largely unhearded of in that area. It was a pretty sight to throwing the snow drifts into the air, from what I saw on TV and train fans' websites. Even the SWC had to re-route to the BNSF transcon for a week.

I think the Donner Pass is the biggest test than on the plains due to terrian, avalanches, etc.

BTW, on SWC in two occassions- one is in Raton, NM and one in ABQ, are spreaders parked by.

Hey Alan and Anthony, maybe we need a seasonal subforum for rotaries. HAHAHA!!!

We are scheduled to take the CZ next week, should be nice with the rain, wind and snow.

not sure how close fernley is to the route.

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FERNLEY, Nev. --A canal levee ruptured early Saturday after heavy rainfall, pouring more than 3 feet of near-freezing water into about 800 homes and stranding about 3,500 people, authorities said.

A 30-foot-long section of the Truckee Canal broke shortly before 5 a.m. in the desert agricultural town about 33 miles east of Reno, officials said.

No injuries were reported.

The area had gotten snow plus heavy rain on Friday as a storm pummeled the West Coast, raising a threat of mud slides and flooding in California, blacking out thousands of customers and blanketing the Sierra Nevada range with deep snow.

"It was a mess up there last night," said Chuck Allen of the Nevada Department of Public Safety. "It's so cold here. The snow is about 2 inches in depth and the temperatures are right near the frigid mark both for the rescuers and rescuees."

Residents were being taken by 10 school buses to schools, and bulldozers were brought in to shore up the levee, Allen said. The nearby Fallon Naval Air Station provided three helicopters in case anyone needed rescue from a roof and local officials deployed boats, Allen said.

"Water to the edge of our driveway and rising quickly," resident Bill Sanchez told CNN. "There's some cars there, the water's up to the doors."

The canal brings water from the Truckee River, starting just east of Reno and running to the farming community of Fallon, about 60 miles away.

In December 1996, flooding from a rupture of an irrigation canal that is part of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District surrounded about 60 Fernley homes with as much as 2 feet of water.

On Jan. 3, 1997, flooding from the Truckee River swamped motels, casinos and other businesses in Reno and made hundreds of homes uninhabitable.

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Gladly its all over now. Where I am we had a lot of rain and hurricane force winds on Friday that knocked down a number of trees and cut power in a lot of places. Hopefully we don't have to deal with one of those again for awhile.