Steam & Excursion > When The Weather Turns Bad Some Strange Trains May Show Up!

While railroads in the days of steam tried to run their passenger trains on specified routes with speciric scheules Mother Nature some times had her own ideas.  When she threw bad weather at the railroads in the West some strange sights appeared, such as this one.

The date is February 15, 1949 and winter is in full advance in the mountains nearby Wendonver, Nevada.  Western Pacific's Exposition Flyer has just arrived after battling the storm as she head East.  She is soon met by Southern Pacific's City Of San Francisco who has been detoured to the WP and is running as the second Train #39 behind WP #483 who is running as the nornal Train #39.

As the WP crews go about clearing the accumulated snow off the front of 4-8-4 #483, WP will call on WP 2-8-2 #301 to drop down and act as helper to The City so she can continue on her way.

We can thank the late Gil Kneiss for capturing these fine images for us to enjoy today.

Martin



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/16 13:37 by LoggerHogger.

---

---

Fascinating!  Notice the Expo Flyer has three domes built for the yet to be launched California Zephyr.

Dave

DavidP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fascinating!  Notice the Expo Flyer has three
> domes built for the yet to be launched California
> Zephyr.
>
> Dave

Yes!  Very cool to see the CZ cars being mixed into the Exp Flyer prior to the introduction of the Silver Lady!  Handsome steam engine on the front; I didn't realize WP had those.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

Great pictures, you hardly think of Wendover as being near that level of snow and a WP steamer ahead
of the PAs would obviously be a consist that never happened.

Out

callum_out Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great pictures, you hardly think of Wendover as
> being near that level of snow and a WP steamer
> ahead
> of the PAs would obviously be a consist that never
> happened.
>
> Out
To the west by a few miles is Silver Zone Pass, over 6,000 feet

That's photographic evidence of domes being hauled behind steam in regular service.  There was debate if that ever happened - it was speculated that the future CZ domes did get hauled behind steam on either D&RG or WP.  But this is the first photo I have ever seen of this.

The baggage appears to possibly be a CZ car as well. Would the new cars already be lettered "California Zephyr" at this point?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/16 09:14 by onequiknova.

 A couple years later the CZ, COSF, and other trains were diverted through Mojave...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

onequiknova Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The baggage appears to possibly be a CZ car as
> well. Would the new cars already be lettered
> "California Zephyr" at this point?

Yes.

Yes Silver Zone is over 6,000 feet but it's so dry out there you rarely get a large snowfall. I drove that
handling our Utah locations for years and never had much of a problem. The worst you'd see was that
NDOT would make the truckers chain up once in a while. The worst snow pass in Nevada (including
Donner) was just West of Carlin, that thing was a beast! The railroads managed to go around it.

Out

Having a relatively slow 2-8-2 helping the COSF across Nevada is not going to help the schedule, is it?

LoggerHogger wrote:

> ... WP will call on WP 2-8-2 #301 to drop down and ask as helper to The City so she can continue on her way.

What does "ask as helper" mean?

(Update:  a few milliseconds after I posted my question, I realized "ask" probably should be "act")

>As the WP crews go about clearing the accumulated snow off the front of 4-8-4 #483...

How do you know this?  Is there a photo showing WP crews clearing the engine of snow?
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/16 13:39 by johnsweetser.

johnsweetser Wrote:

> >As the WP crews go about clearing the accumulated
> snow off the front of 4-8-4 #483...
>
> How do you know this?  Is there a photo showing
> crews clearing the engine of snow?
>  

Yes there are.

Martin

Is that second Alco PB doing it's imitation of a steam loco, or is that from the WP 483 on the adjacent track in pic 2?

nycman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is that second Alco PB doing it's imitation of a
> steam loco, or is that from the WP 483 on the
> adjacent track in pic 2?

Jim,

I am pretty sure that is #483 getting her steam up ready to depart after the COSF gets out of town.

Martin

This is some excellent b&w photography! Martin, did you scan the negatives to reproduce the digital image or are they scanned from prints? Thanks for sharing!

These are all scanned from the original negatives.

Martin

Pg. 229 of "The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroads" described the detour of Feb. 15, 1949:

"In 1949 an uncommonly heavy snowfall in the Ruby Mountains of Eastern Nevada closed the Southern Pacific mainline between Wells, Nevada, and Ogden, and the haughty City of San Francisco was rerouted via Salt Lake City and the Western Pacific tracks through Wendover, Nevada."

Gil Kneiss took at least three other photos at Wendover that day.  I'll describe the sequence of his photos:

First photo of sequence (found on pg. 229 of "The CP and the SP Railroads") shows a worker clearing snow of the front of WP engine 483.  On an adjacent track are two City of San Francisco cars, one of which is a Pullman.

Second photo of sequence is the first photo in this thread.  Much snow is gone from the front of  #483 compared to first photo.

Third photo of sequence can be found on pg. 228 of "The CP and the SP Railroads" and also the second photo of a Trainorders thread from last year:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3661922,3662227.   In the photo, more snow is gone from the front of #483.  The SP Alco PAs are now abreast of #483.  Does this mean that the entire SP train was slowly backing up, based on the Pullman seen in the first photo of the sequence and the location of the Alco PAs in the second photo of the sequence?  I don't know why the SP train would back up. Or could it be that one or two photos show the first section of 39?  If so, why would there be more than two sections of the City of San Francisco at Wendover the same day?

Fourth photo of sequence  (on pg. 228 of "The CP and the SP Railroads") shows the SP and WP trains standing in same location as the previous photo but the SP train now has a WP steam helper on the front.

Fifth photo of sequence is the second photo posted here showing the SP train underway.

nycman wrote:

>... is that [smoke] from the WP 483 on the adjacent track in pic 2?

LoggerHogger replied:

>I am pretty sure that is #483 getting her steam up ready to depart after the COSF gets out of town.

The fourth photo of the sequence I described (with both trains at rest) showed much smoke coming from the two WP steamers so I doubt it was a case of one "getting her steam up."


 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/16 18:13 by johnsweetser.