Southern Pacific’s Overland Route

Southern Pacific’s Overland Route: San Francisco toward Salt Lake City, via Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada Mountains including Donner Pass. Crossing the Bay Bridge to San Francisco we see the SP Ferry Eureka, plus streetcars and scenes at the Oakland Mole passenger terminal. Mostly steam action, there is rare footage of the “City of San Francisco” in the late 30s with the rare yellow E2’s. Then it’s an assortment of trains as we head toward Sacramento. Steam power includes: 4-6-2’s, 4-8-2’s, 4-8-4’s, 0-8-0’s, 0-6-0’s, 2-8-0’s, 2-8-2’s, 2-10-2’s, 4-8-0’s, and famous articulated Cab Forwards. We will see lots of action from switching in Roseville, and mainline trains of all types heading both east and west through this region. Donner Pass east of Roseville, and west of Reno is captured with a variety of trains including several Cab Forwards on both freight and passenger trains. There are scenes of a cab forward on the Roseville Turntable, as well as other surprises. The last cab forward run, with 4274 is seen a few times headed east toward Reno. There is even a scene of a Virginia & Truckee train waiting at the Reno depot, and shots of SP action around Sparks. A few scenes here are Black and White, but otherwise the show is mostly color footage.

This vintage material has no original sound of course, but we have added loads of informative narration about the trains, engines, and locations, as well as a music background. After the vintage material is finished we have added in some former SP engines that do have live sound. This is in the form of 1999 footage which includes some scenes of SP 4449 en route to Railfair on the BNSF line, and some neat shots of 1233, an 0-6-0 working a freight from Sacramento to Woodland, CA in 1999 real steam freight action. These two segments have live audio.