I hope this finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy.
February 9th I spent the morning hiking and exploring the abandoned show sheds and tunnels near the summit on Donner Pass in California. At elevation 7,056 feet, Donner is a mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada range, above Donner Lake; 9 miles west of Truckee, California.
Donner Summit receives 35-40 feet of snow per year and sometimes 70. Snowdrifts can be dozens of feet high, with the constant possibility of avalanches. To keep trains safe and moving, the Central Pacific Railroad built forty miles of snowsheds to protect their tracks. Used were 65 million board feet of lumber and 900 tons of bolts and spikes. Eventually snow fighting equipment improved and some of the sheds were removed. The remaining sheds were rebuilt of concrete so that collapse was no longer a threat. Trains used these tunnels for 125 years, until 1993 when the line was rerouted to a new tunnel running through nearby Mount Judah. To think that Southern Pacific class AC 6000 horsepower 4-8-8-2 cab forward locomotives once made daily multiple round trips over the Donner Pass route between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada.
Follow the link below to my gallery of images from the hike, which are in chronological order from west to east, as I started at the west portal of tunnel #6 at Sugar Bowl Road, photo 2. The weather conditions were not the best for this activity, but I guess if I’m going to explore snow sheds I should do it on a nasty winter day.
Enjoy,
Matthew
https://www.losttracksoftime.com/p310206447
Thanks for the pictures. Looks like a cold lonly place.
Great effort Matthew, and great shots too!
Decades from now someone will stumble on those concrete snowsheds and wonder.
Right now I'm wondering how the damn taggers found their way up there. Is there nowhere safe?
They look so small in stature. Amazing that locomotives ran through.
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Amazing pictures. Shows why SP used cabforwards.
Flintlock76Great effort Matthew, and great shots too! Decades from now someone will stumble on those concrete snowsheds and wonder. Right now I'm wondering how the damn taggers found their way up there. Is there nowhere safe?
I suspect somebody has tagged the top of Mt. Everest.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Spray the graffitti, take a selfie, get likes is what it's about, I guess. It's the point of reaching the top of Mt. Everest isn't it? Taking a selfie?
BaltACD Flintlock76 Great effort Matthew, and great shots too! Decades from now someone will stumble on those concrete snowsheds and wonder. Right now I'm wondering how the damn taggers found their way up there. Is there nowhere safe? I suspect somebody has tagged the top of Mt. Everest.
Flintlock76 Great effort Matthew, and great shots too! Decades from now someone will stumble on those concrete snowsheds and wonder. Right now I'm wondering how the damn taggers found their way up there. Is there nowhere safe?
They don't have to, the whole trail on the way to the summit is a massive junkyard.
And that's not counting the unrecovered bodies.
It's gotten so bad the Nepalese Army's had to go on Everest clean-up details, and the Nepalese government is considering limiting access on account of the messes various expeditions are leaving behind.
And even Sir Edmund Hillary didn't take a selfie at the summit, he took a photo of his partner, Tensing Norgay!
Beautiful work as always. Thanks Matthew. Now I feel like I need a sweater.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Paul of Covington Beautiful work as always. Thanks Matthew. Now I feel like I need a sweater.
Oh yeah, me too!
Paul, thanks for reminding us what this thread's really all about.
Ah yes, the old second mainline over Donner...may it rest in peace.
I did not know they abandoned the pass. I drove up to it in 1979 and 1980 while visiting my aunt and rode over it both ways in 1980.
Thanks for the pictures.
Confused Railfan I did not know they abandoned the pass. I drove up to it in 1979 and 1980 while visiting my aunt and rode over it both ways in 1980. Thanks for the pictures.
Johnny
Deggesty Confused Railfan I did not know they abandoned the pass. I drove up to it in 1979 and 1980 while visiting my aunt and rode over it both ways in 1980. Thanks for the pictures. The pass is still in use, but with only one through track now
Confused Railfan
I did not know they abandoned the pass. I drove up to it in 1979 and 1980 while visiting my aunt and rode over it both ways in 1980. Thanks for the pictures. The pass is still in use, but with only one through track now
Well, not exactly. The north track that actually went over the Pass was taken out in the '90s. I can't recall the exact date but it was before the UP takeover. The north track was plainly visible from Old U.S. 40 to the north.
The south track, which is now the main line, passes through a long tunnel and technically doesn't go right over Donner Pass. Nevertheless, it is still refered to as the "Donner Pass Line".
I was most fortunate for the opportunity to ride westbound over the north track on Amtrak in the late 1980s. It was a most beautiful and scenic ride. What a pity that they don't use it anymore.
There have been on again, off again, on again, off again railfan rumors that the UP intends to eventually restore the second track. Some of these rumors were substantiated according to my understanding. But up until now this has never happened and perhaps never will.
It just all depends on how much rail traffic on the Donner Pass Line grows. The single tracking right at the top of the summit can create quite a bottle neck when traffic levels are high.
One time we were headed east on Amtrak and hit a red board at the end of the double track at Norden. We sat there for an hour waiting on traffic to clear.
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
I guess this means that most of the passes in the west aren't really passes since almost all include a tunnel somewhere. Some people take semantics way too far!
Fred M CainWell, not exactly. The north track that actually went over the Pass was taken out in the '90s. I can't recall the exact date but it was before the UP takeover. The north track was plainly visible from Old U.S. 40 to the north. The south track, which is now the main line, passes through a long tunnel and technically doesn't go right over Donner Pass. Nevertheless, it is still refered to as the "Donner Pass Line".
The North track also went thru a tunnel under the summit of the pass. A pass may refer to the route thru the mountains, not just the summit of the pass.
I crossed the Donner Pass by air (quite a rapid descent after cresting the pass that pops the ears), by rail (Amtrak in the mid 1970's) and by car.
The car was a borrowed stick-shift Honda. I was advised there were tire chains in the hatchback, and if the CHP officer ordered everyone to put them on, to pull off to a gas station and pay someone to do this (I wasn't going to argue with the person lending me the car that I could do it myself).
The Amtrak trip was quite scenic. The Interstate trip not as much. The one thing a remember is that even though it is a rapid climb in elevation, the highway had rolling up and downgrades even when climbing. That and numerous gravel "off ramps" for semi trucks that burned up their brakes?
The craziest things were the highway billboards with driving instructions. They said things like "let 'er drift" with more specific instructions to simply coast in the highest gear on certain downgrades and "let 'em cool" meaning your brakes. I left the Honda in 5th gear and just took my foot off the gas, and I pretty much "balanced" at the posted speed limit. This advice was aimed at trucks that they wouldn't need the emergency gravel off ramps, but it worked for what I was driving, which was that somewhat taller Honda model that was a distant precursor of a compact SUV.
A lot of people were roaring down the downgrade segments as if I were standing still, but hey, I thought I would be gentle with this friend's automobile. Got great gas mileage that way, too.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
My hubby called Donner Pass the most cantankerous piece of highway he ever drove. He literally went over it more times than he cares to consider. He loved it in the summer but cursed it in the winter. He remembers once that CHP was requiring max chains on everything and at the chain checkpoint letting thru fleets of 50 vehicles at a time. Why snow was falling at the rate of a foot an hour at the summit. He was the lucky guy that was picked to lead his group. He had one set of chains leftover after throwing max on all his drive and trailer tires. He put those on his steering axle. He said that 2 hours later they crossed over. He had been plowing snow with his bumper and his was the last group allowed over that night. They decided to close Donner 10 minutes after he left. He got his entire group over safe and when he got to his fuel stop he crashed hard for his break of 8 hours.
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