CPRR Sierra Grade 360º Panoramas

Now online at the CPRR Museum:

Donner Summit 360 degree virtual reality panorama, August, 2006.

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From "Bruce C. Cooper" BCC@CPRR.ORG

The main reason for my return visits to the grade at Cape Horn and the Summit (at which my great great grandfather, L.M. Clement, was the engineer during construction) was to take integrated sets of photographs from which to create a series of 360º interactive “QTVR” (QuickTime Virtual Reality) panoramas to add to the Sierra Grade exhibit. The first of these (which I created by digitally compositing 21 separate images) has just been posted online. The vantage point from which I took the images is the same one from which A.J. Russell took his famous 1868 stereo view of the CPRR’s then newly completed summit passage.

—Bruce C. Cooper

Original Crew & Engine Districts

From: pravoslavna@comcast.net (Abramoslav Burnettovych)

Has anyone figured out how the original engine and crew districts between Sacramento and Ogden were laid out in 1869 and the very early years of the Central Pacific? (Engine and crew districts were almost certainly identical in the very early years, and perhaps for a long time thereafter.)

Some places, such as Toanno and Terrace, appear to have been early engine and crew change points and even shop facilities, but they apparently disappeared rather quickly. It's obvious that better rail and roadbed, better engines, the change of locomotive fuel from wood to coal, and the increase in train speeds very quickly lengthened the territory a crew and its engine could cover. With this came changes in the layout of the operating Divisions (superintendents and train dispatchers were given more territory.)

A chronology of engine and crew districts, and changes in the structure of the operating Divisions, would be an heuristic product for this List !

—Abram Burnett

CP locomotive 48

From: KyleKWyatt@gmail.com

Does anyone have a nice reference scan photo of CP 4-4-0 #48 after the Stevens rebuild that they'd be willing to share? Doesn't need to be anything hi-res, just something that will show up well on a screen when opened.

—Kyle