Listing of Overland Route Stations and Mileage

Lynn Farrar has prepared an extremely detailed Listing of Overland Route Stations and Mileage, 1866-1996 in four parts with an introduction and list of sources. The four part table totals 68 pages in length.

CPRR articles of incorporation and original survey signed by Stanford and Judah

"California’s Original State Constitution to be on Display" © American Chronicle, Education Desk, Beverly Hills, CA, September 7, 2005. (News Article)

" ... a special collection of documents related to Governor Leland Stanford will be exhibited on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 9-11 [2005] on the first floor of the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts, 1020 O Street. This exhibition, drawn from the holdings of the California State Archives, will feature the articles of incorporation of the Central Pacific Railroad, of which Stanford was first president, the original survey of the Central Pacific over the Sierra Nevada, signed by Stanford and engineer Theodore Judah, and Governor Stanford’s daily journals. ... " [More]

[Courtesy Google Alerts.]

Lands that were for Sale After Construction

... do you have information on lands that were on sale for settlement after the construction of the Railroad and the advantages living in those lands? This is for a group assignment. I have searched but have been unsuccessful. Your site is really great and extensive. ...

Publishing your railroad book

We've been puzzled by seeing several people spending thousands of dollars to self publish railroad books in the conventional way that results in high up-front inventory costs, and an expensive volume, with the result that they strain their finances while making the information much less accessible than it could be.

You might want to consider electronic publishing either on the internet or using on demand printing (or both). If you can scan the pages and convert the text using optical character recognition, yourself, then publication costs can be very low while maintaining extremely high quality (and you can get bound volumes while avoiding having to spend hours running a photocopier yourself).

If you created your book as a computer file, putting it online is incredibly easy. Putting a converted book online as a PDF file also costs almost nothing, and takes very little time and effort, now that scanners and on-line storage costs have dropped so dramatically. Our website despite having thousands of pages, thousands of pictures, and multiple books on-line, still has a vast and growing amount of unused space, so we'd be glad to host such an electronic railroad book on our website at no cost to you (and at no incremental cost to us) if you don't have the capability yourself and want our help to do this. Here are a few examples of books or book chapters already on our website:
Tutorow
Chew
Daggett
Kibbey
Many other examples can be found at in the history readings.

Judging from Bruce Cooper's experience in publishing Riding the Transcontinental Rails this way, printing copies from such an electronic manuscript a few at a time shouldn't cost very much per copy, and requires no up-front investment.

Contact the CPRR Museum if you would like us to publish your railroad book online for free.

Newspapers that Don't Retract Errors

From: "chris graves" caliron@cwnet.com

From the San Francisco Estate Circular, March 1874, page 4:

"Several of the papers here follow the rule of never taking back anything they say. Malice and stupidity have them at constant war with the truth, and of this fact they are frequently overwhelmingly convinced, yet they never retract. In this respect they are as culpable as the Texas editor who announced that a prominent citizen had been hung the previous day for horse stealing. The citizen, in a fury, called the next day to have the utterly groundless report contradicted, but the editor, though convinced of his error, declined. Said he: 'We never take back anything here; but, if it will be any obligement to you, I will state in tomorrow's paper that, after you were strung up, a party of your friends rushed in and cut you down! This is the best I can for you.' Why an editor's pen – but too frequently overshadowed by a donkey's ears – should be considered infallible, and the writer be ashamed to correct lies born of his own malice or stupidity, is one of those conundrums the study of which has done so much to make polished skating-rinks of heads once clothed with bushy locks."

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Newspapers and books are not the only media susceptible to misteaks!

Stereograph Error: Houseworth #1318, Secretown Trestle.
Train is missing on half of the stereoview.

"Where did “Rocklin” come from? by Gary Day, Rocklin and Roseville Today

"Where did 'Rocklin' come from?" by Gary Day, © Rocklin and Roseville Today, Rocklin, CA. (News Article)
From a 12 part series on Rocklin History.

Our city’s name first appeared in print in June 1864 when "Rocklin" was listed in a Central Pacific Railroad timetable as a stop between Junction (now Roseville) and Pino (now Loomis). But how did the name, "Rocklin," originate? ... it was common practice, during construction of the transcontinental railroad for the Central Pacific to name passenger stations for locally famous people. According to the Loomis Historical Society, the town of Loomis was named for its first stationmaster. But railroad archives don’t show an 1860’s employee named "Rocklin." ... in 1860 many Irishmen in California had probably survived the Irish Potato Famine and the "coffin ships" that brought them to Boston and New York in the 1840’s. ... [More]

[Courtesy Google Alerts.]