Founded in 1903 as a way to give the powerhouse Southern Pacific railroad competition into northern California, the Western Pacific was built to connect the Rio Grande railroad in Utah with the San Francisco Bay area. To cross the formidable Sierra Nevada mountains, WP’s engineers chose a route further to the north than SP crossing in order to take advantage of the canyon cut into the mountains’ granite by the Feather River. The WP was completed in 1909, with the final spike being driven here, at Keddie, California’s, Spanish Creek Trestle. “Completed” can be a fluid term, however, as in 1930 the WP began construction of a 112-mile line north from Keddie, in the eastern end of the Feather River Canyon, up the east side of the northern Sierra to a connection with the Great Northern in Bieber, California. Opened in 1931, this line provided yet another way to compete with the SP, this time with traffic to and from the Pacific Northwest. This new junction was known as the Keddie Wye, consisting of the original crossing of Spanish Creek, along with a new steel trestle and a tunnel (Tunnel 32) on the third leg of the wye (in the shadows to the right of the train in this photo), forming a triangle of track to provide a connection to this new line from either the east or the west on the original mainline. On the new line, known as the Highline (and also as the Inside Gateway), the first 25 miles of serpentine track north from Keddie required eight tunnels, with a ninth needed further north as well. On a September 1969 day, a Western Pacific freight comes off the Highline and begins heading west to Portola behind an impressive lash-up of F-Units: F7A 922-A leads the train, followed by F3A 926-A (ex-WP 801-D) still wearing passenger colors and nose logo, two F7 or F3 B-units, another A-unit, a B-unit and another A-unit – Seven Fs in total! (Leo J. Munson photograph - Keddie California - September 1969)
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
