"Jupiter"

"Jupiter". And the Golden Spike. , Nearing the completion of America's first transcontinental railroad in 1868, Schenectady Locomotive works filled an important order: four recently built engines numbered #60, #61, #62, and #63 were dismantled and shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco. They were then barged up the Sacramento River to the offices of the Central Pacific Railroad and then re-assembled., One of these, Jupiter (#60), had been chosen to pull the lead east bound train to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, for the historic joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad lines., The completion of this engineering feat, first proposed in 1847 and then begun in 1863, had been guided by the vision Theodore Judah and Asa Whitney, the technical skills of the Army Corps of Engineers, and thousands of Civil War veterans and Chinese laborers. Over the course of six years, they constructed numerous high trestles over wild rivers, blasted tunnels through the solid rock of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and laid 1912 miles of track, at the cost of hundreds of lives. , Central Pacific President Leland Stanford's coach arrived safely on May 10th, 1869 for the historic meeting with the Union Pacific's westbound train #119 at Promontory Summit. Spirits were high as a golden spike was hammered into the last rail symbolically joining the East and West Coasts, and Jupiter, the Schenectady-built locomotive crossed the newly joined track, [Captions:] , Main Image: Jupiter at the Golden Spike National Historic Site. The park was established at Promontory Summit, Utah on April 2, 1957. In 1974, the National Park Service commissioned facsimiles of both Jupiter and the Union Pacific's engine #119. Both make regular demonstration runs., Right: Posters advertising the grand opening of transcontinental service on the Central and Union Pacific Railroad Line.