A Century of Southern Pacific Steam Engines by Guy Dunscomb (NI)

800 illustrations, 2 color plates, 18 division maps.

The historic Southern Pacific, the road whose rails extend from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Salt Lake, and from the forests of Oregon to the Mississippi has operated or controlled over 16,000 miles of railroad. It operated in eight states and the Republic of Mexico; it had the longest north-south route of any railroad on the North American continent; it operated nearly a thousand miles of electric lines, and over a thousand miles of narrow gauge lines, San Francisco Bay and Mississippi River ferry boats, Sacramento and Colorado River steamers, and oceangoing steamships, and now operates, in addition to its rail properties, fourteen hundred miles of pipe lines and twenty-five thousand miles of truck lines.

It was in February, 1863, that active construction started at Sacramento on the SP’s parent Central Pacific, and was carried on under the management of the famed “Big Four,” Huntington, Hopkins, Crocker, and Stanford, until a connection was made with the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, in May, 1869. Since that date nearly three hundred railroad organizations have been consolidated to form what is known today as the Southern Pacific Company, and over four thousand steam locomotives have appeared on the scene, and have now forever departed.