Nostalgia & History > Wolverton: WP steam and diesel

Scans of these slides by W.B. Wolverton are in the database at the University of Utah library, but I haven't been able to access that site for several weeks, so the captions come from what's on the slide mounts of the images at the Western Railway Museum Archives.

1) Western Pacific FT 911 in its as-delivered paint scheme on an eastbound at Portola, CA in 1948, when Gulling St., the only crossing in town, was still at-grade.

2) A little better framed, WP 2-8-2 #333 is on another eastbound freight at Portola.  

3) WP 2-8-0 #25 westbound on what is probably No.1, the Feather River Express, at Whipple Rd. in what was then Decoto, CA (now part of Union City).  It's a bit more built-up there now, and the ex-WP main line here is no longer used as a through route: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GChLAnMNZ35adWLq7

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Wow!  That must be the old Gulling Street bridge in the two Portola pics.  Must have been a wet year with so much water in the river for October.

Wow, Wow and WOW !!

All three are excellent.

For some reason I always liked the original WP FT colors.

Superlative presentation!   Thanks, Evan.

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

I notice in the first photo looks like the Fireman is standing on top of the trailing engine.

What a classic EMD paint scheme on early F Units, just loved them before the railroads realized repainting in these "fancy" schemes was too expensive at best!
Gonut

LarryB Wrote:
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> Wow!  That must be the old Gulling Street bridge
> in the two Portola pics.  Must have been a wet
> year with so much water in the river for October.

No, it is 2 blocks east of where the gulling street overpass will be. It was the bridge for Beckwith St. Im not sure if the concrete piers are still there, but most ofthat old structure was still there even up until the 70s, just not usable.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/25 17:12 by TomG.

Here is a link to all 65 of Bill Wolverton's photos at the University of Utah, including a photo of Bill himself. The WP photos you shared here are apparently not part of the collection.

https://collections.lib.utah.edu/search?q=P0796+Bill+Wolverton+Photograph+Collection+trains&facet_type_t=%22Image%22

Don Strack

donstrack Wrote:

> Here is a link to all 65 of Bill Wolverton's
> photos at the University of Utah, including a
> photo of Bill himself. The WP photos you shared
> here are apparently not part of the collection.

Right now, the link you posted works on my iPhone but not my laptop ("connection has timed out"), and earlier today, it didn't work on either.  Not sure what the problem is.  The two steam photos are results 3 and 21 ("Trains (59)" and "Trains (58)"), but I'm not finding the diesel shot.