Katana VentraIP

Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased independent operations in 1875 when the railroad was leased to the Southern Pacific Railroad. Its assets were formally merged into Southern Pacific in 1959.

"CPRR" redirects here. For the miniature railroad owned by Walt Disney, see Carolwood Pacific Railroad.

Overview

Sacramento, CA; San Francisco, California

Sacramento, California-Ogden, Utah

June 28, 1861–April 1, 1885
continued as an SP leased line until June 30, 1959

Southern Pacific

4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

Following the completion of the Pacific Railroad Surveys in 1855, several national proposals to build a transcontinental railroad failed because of political disputes over slavery. With the secession of the South in 1861, the modernizers in the Republican Party controlled the US Congress. They passed legislation in 1862 authorizing the central rail route with financing in the form of land grants and government railroad bond, which were all eventually repaid with interest.[1] The government and the railroads both shared in the increased value of the land grants, which the railroads developed.[2] The construction of the railroad also secured for the government the economical "safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, and public stores".[3]

Museums and archives[edit]

A replica of the Sacramento, California, Central Pacific Railroad passenger station is part of the California State Railroad Museum, located in the Old Sacramento State Historic Park.


Nearly all the company's early correspondence is preserved at Syracuse University, as part of the Collis Huntington Papers collection. It has been released on microfilm (133 reels). The following libraries have the microfilm: University of Arizona at Tucson; and Virginia Commonwealth University at Richmond. Additional collections of manuscript letters are held at Stanford University and the Mariners' Museum at Newport News, Virginia. Alfred A. Hart was the official photographer of the CPRR construction.

Central Pacific 1, Gov. Stanford

CP 233, a the railroad had built, is stored at the California State Railroad Museum.

2-6-2T

later purchased by the Southern Pacific Transportation Company.

Central Pacific 3, C. P. Huntington

Central Pacific's second number 31. Was sold to Stockton Terminal and Eastern in 1914 and renumbered 1. Currently at the Travel Town Museum in Los Angeles.

Former Western Pacific Mariposa

was built for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and never served on the Central Pacific, but the engine was one of two locomotives built by the CP's Sacramento shops in preservation (the other being CP 233). Moreover, its specifications were derived from CP 173, and thus is the only surviving example of that engine's design.

Virginia and Truckee 18 Dayton

Central Pacific's numbers , and 63 Leviathan. Although both engines have been scrapped, and therefore technically do not count as having been preserved, there are exact, full-size operating replicas built in recent years. The Jupiter was built for the National Park Service along with a replica of Union Pacific's 119 for use at their Golden Spike National Historic Site. Leviathan was finished in 2009, and was privately owned, traveling to various railroads to operate, until sold in 2018 to Stone Gable Estates of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Stone Gable relettered the locomotive as Pennsylvania Railroad No. 331, a now-scrapped steam locomotive that pulled Abraham Lincoln's funeral train, and operates on the estate's Harrisburg, Lincoln and Lancaster Railroad.[50]

60 Jupiter

The following CP engines have been preserved:

June 28, 1861: "Central Pacific Rail Road of California" incorporated; name changed to "Central Pacific Railroad of California" on October 8, 1864, after the amendment passes that summer.[51]

Pacific Railway Act

1861


1862


1863


1864


1865


1866


1867


1868


1869


1870


1876


1877


1883


1885


1888


1899


1959

Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad

[57]

Stockton and Visalia Railroad

[58]

Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870)

Rail transport in California

(Sierra Nevada)

Donner Pass

Bain, David Haward (1999). . New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-80889-X.

Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Beebe, Lucius (1963). The Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads. Berkeley, CA: Howell-North Books.

(2020). Ghosts of Gold Mountain. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Profiles how 20,000 Chinese railroad workers lived and worked while building the Central Pacific over Donner Pass. Shows changing attitudes of CPRR officials who employed the Chinese.

Chang, Gordon

Cooper, Bruce C. (2005). Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865–1881. Philadelphia: Polyglot Press.  1-4115-9993-4.

ISBN

Cooper, Bruce Clement (2010). The Classic Western American Railroad Routes. New York: Chartwell Books/Worth Press.  978-0-7858-2573-9.

ISBN

Daggett, Stuart (1922). . New York: The Ronald Press. chapters southern pacific.

Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific

Central Pacific Railroad lawsuit and investigation documents, 1876–1887 at the California State Library.

Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad Company Collection, 1861–1899 at California State Library.

Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

handwritten report by L. M. Clement. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

Railroads in California

(HAER) No. CA-196, "Central Pacific Transcontinental Railroad, Sacramento to Nevada state line, Sacramento, Sacramento County, CA", 7 photos, 79 data pages, 1 photo caption page

Historic American Engineering Record