Nostalgia & History > 40 Years Ago Today (5/26/1983)

On May 26, 1983 my good buddy Jon Porter and I boarded Amtrak Train 6 at Oakland with a destination of Denver. Amtrak's newly re-branded San Francisco Zephyr to California Zephyr was only a month or so old, however, because of the huge mudslide on the Rio Grande at Thistle UT, the 'new' CZ continued to roll over the Union Pacific between Ogden and Denver, only now it was a 'detour.' Once at Denver we would ride a Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursion over Sherman Hill powered by UP 3985. In between we spent a day on the Joint Line where a huge derailment had just been cleaned up, stacking trains literally back to back in both directions.

For each day of this epic trip I'll post a couple of pics representative of that particular day. Today, 5/26, we're on Train 6, lead by F40PHs 366-308, about to meet SP 9049 West near Shed-47 (I think) on Donner Pass.(You have to look closely to see the SP unit). Also, like this year, the 1982-1983 winter was a wet one as is evidenced by the amount of snow still on the ground over that Memorial Day weekend.

The second photo was taken during a brief stop at Winnemucca that allowed me to take a quick time exposure of the hallway of our sleeper, No. 32041. The Superliners assigned to the SFZ/CZ were only about 2 years old and it was exciting to be sampling new passenger cars.

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Salt Lakr City based passenger  train and engine crews worked to and from Helper, UT.

Except during these months of detours. Ogden to Rawlins I think (or was it Green River?)