27 June

Golden Spike National Park
Promontory, UT

Where the Golden Spike was laid.  you can see the difference in the ties.  the ties from the east are milled and square.  ties from the west were hand hewn and are all different.

Jupiter arrival

Central Pacific RR

119 arrival

Union Pacific RR

 

butch and the Jupiter

 

 

annnd you know he has to be checking out the mechanics

Engines sitting in the original positions from the ceremony

 

 

the location of Promontory was actually where they had to go around Salt Lake.  years later they built a bridge over the lake which took a day off the trip and was a much easier run.  that made this section of rail line obsolete and they basically closed it up and all the towns that had sprung up along the line died out.  during WWII the rail lines were torn up and the metal used for the war effort building planes.  When they made this a national park they re-layed 2 miles of tracks for the park.  almost all the grade still exists from the original climb through the mountains.  some of them have been leveled so you can drive where the original track would have been.  of course, we just had to do this...

looking back through one of the cuts......poor subie.

 

 

 

Two miles from the park is a company that develops fuel rockets for missles and also for......

 



 

the missle behind is from the space shuttle

and if there's a sign that says don't climb on this and butch is there.....

the story from the National Park rangers is that the last time they tested one of these buggers for the shuttles,  it was like an earthquake at the park visitor center.  they say you could see the smoke from the exhaust form more than 30 miles away.