Desolation revisited

The original Union Pacific right-of-way atop Sherman Hill. (Photo by BobbaLew 30 years ago.)

“Bob,” my hairdresser exclaimed; “this magazine is November 2012.”
I take along magazines to read in case I hafta wait for my hairdresser.
“Indeed it is,” I commented. “2012 is the year my wife died. She died in April, and that magazine probably came in late September or early October.
I put it on my master-bathroom window-shelf with many other 2012 magazines, and there it stayed.
I rediscovered ‘em recently taking down my Christmas candles. ‘I woulda read this; this too.’ All shoved aside after my wife died.”
The August 2012 issue of Trains magazine had a giant treatment of Union Pacific Railroad, half our nation’s first transcontinental railroad. The Pacific Railroad Act passed in 1862. Union Pacific was therefore 150 years old in 2012.
I finally read the article. It prompted consideration I never had. Our nation’s first transcontinental railroad was conceived at the end of an era of building railroads for public good. This had earlier been true for canals. Unite the nation: sea-to-shining-sea.
It was finished after our nation was sundered by Civil War, when railroading became the playground of capitalist charlatans eager to pillage and plunder. Railroading became a stinkpot, rife with ripoffs by crooks pigging out on the public till.
Premier was the Crédit Mobilier scandal. Crédit Mobilier were the heavy-hitter stockholders of Union Pacific Railroad, and they doled out gumint funds with gay abandon = little regard for expense accounting.
They made off with millions, what now would be billions. Not long after the Transcontinental was finished, Congress investigated. It wanted to revoke the railroad’s charter, and indict heavy-hitters as criminals. Some heavy-hitters were congressmen.
In 1987 my wife and I aimed our huge gas-guzzling Ford Econoline west. We made it to Montana on Interstate-90, but then turned back east. As a railfan I always wanted to visit UP’s Sherman Hill, where the railroad crossed the Continental Divide. Sherman Hill is a blessing, the only route over the Divide without a twisting climb or tunnels through rock-bound battlements.
Sherman is fairly gentle, 8,247 feet above sea-level via the original route, 7,921 at highest on the bypass built in 1901. The east slope is not a craggy rockface like down in Colorado. Sherman was the easiest route over the Front Range.
Union Pacific no longer uses its original route over Sherman. The original summit was at Ames Monument pictured below.


Ames Monument. (Photo by BobbaLew 30 years ago.)

It memorializes Oakes Ames, a congressman instrumental in building the original Union Pacific. He later fell out of favor with the Crédit Mobilier scandal.
We went to that monument in search of that original right-of-way (pictured as lede). It’s visible, but what I remember is how rudimentary it looked. No cut or fill; just lay the track on table-flat land. Surroundings are bone-dry, and sloping is gentle. No trees, no shrubbery = utter desolation.
The new bypass required one tunnel, 1,800 foot Hermosa. I’ve ridden through it behind Union Pacific #3985, a 4-6-6-4 Challenger articulated.


3985.

A second much longer bypass was opened in 1953, Harriman Cut-off. It made climbing the east slope of Sherman manageable, .82%. The original main ruled at 1.55%. Harriman returns to the original UP main at Dale Junction, gated so therefore inaccessible. I had to 180 that giant van up a steep hillside. My wife was terrified.
I also rode that bypass behind 3985. Deep cuts and circuitous routing. It was built by Morrison Knudsen. We sheltered inside a lineside building as they turned the train. Only five cars, $250 per ticket, and that was almost 40 years ago. 3985 wasn’t challenged much. I rented a gigantic VHS video-camera.
Inside that building it started snowing. I think it was May or June. Howling wind and snow; we shivered at least two hours.
So now 150 years have passed, and Union Pacific is no longer the disaster it ended up being in the 1880s. It’s been reorganized twice, chartered again in 1897, no longer encumbered by the Pacific Railroad project.
Now it’s our nation’s largest railroad, and is much more than the original line from Omaha to Ogden, UT.
And finally I’ve read that article. Look what I missed after my wife died?

• My wife died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I still miss her. Best friend I ever had, and after my childhood I needed one. She actually liked me.