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Western Pacific’s Diesel Years by Joseph A Strapac Soft Cover WP
Western Pacifics Diesel Years by Joseph A Strapac
Soft Cover
Copyright 1980
208 pages
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGECHAPTER
PAGE
1 Introduction 3
2 Switchers 10
3 FT Freight Units 36
4 Passenger Units 50
5 F7 Freight Units 64
6 High-Nose Roadswitchers 86
7 Low-Nose Hood Units 100
8 Visitors, Demonstrators, and Tourists 136
9 Motor Cars 150
10 Special Equipment 156
11 Sacramento Northern Diesels 160
12 Tidewater Southern Diesels 178
13 Alameda Belt/Oakland Terminal
Diesels 188
14 The Roster and Appendices 193
cover photo With two books already to its credit, the California Zephyr is more than a revered memory even a decade after its passing. Here, FP7 #805A leads two F3's in a rare A-B-A lashup with the Westbound CZ as it bridges the gap between two tunnels in the Feather River Canyon, blue diesel smoke boiling out of the portal behind. There would be no more summers for the Silver Lady! (Henry W. Brueckman)
title page Our cover engine again, in happier times, has charge of two F3B's and the eastbound CZ a half-mile east of the old station site at Altamont, about 57 miles from Oakland. It's 11:25 on the morning of August 10, 1957 and the glittering domes are already filled with passengers-but the real sights are 200 miles ahead. (Denzel C. Allen, Jr.)
Introduction
Western Pacific was the last railroad completed into California-twice. Its main line, running west from Salt Lake City to Oakland, was finished in 1909; in 1931 the last spike was driven for a north-south connection with the Great Northern. Even though it taps the Union's richest state, WP hasn't had a financially easy time of it. When opened in the years before World War I, all WP could offer was a branchless main stem between the San Francisco Bay area and a connection with the Rio Grande in Utah. Granted, clever surveying allowed a truthful boast of a limiting grade of only 1%, but profiles aren't what bring in busi-ness-and the WP-Rio Grande-Burlington route to Chicago was longer by almost 250 miles than the entrenched SP-UP-C&NW competition. There was little business that could be wrenched away from Espee, an enormous debt-service liability, and (in 1915) open ing of the Panama Canal as the final blow. The original Western Pacific Railway failed in 1916.
A new corporation, unburdened of construction debt and with a charter that allowed construction and acquisition of feeder lines, made another attempt at running the railroad, but was ultimately unsuccessful. This time the bogeyman was the Great Depression, but WP still suffered from weak connections and a marginal traffic-generating potential in its home state. Improvements in physical plant on the scale practiced by other western roads simply never took place on the WP; cash was scarce in the twenties, and by 1935 the corporation was again bankrupt.
If one single economic factor can be said to have "saved" the Western Pacific, it was World War II. A flood of military traffic generated a level of income allowing-demanding-a striking turnabout in both locomotives and roadway maintenance. Enough money was earned during the war to voluntarily discharge the bankruptcy in 1944, and put WP on a financial footing to purchase Zephyr trainsets and dieselize all operations by 1953. Postwar growth in the California economy and the economies of full dieselization further enhanced WP's position; the fifties were good years for Western Pacific.
Unfortunately, the slow-moving luxury train cost more to operate than it earned in fares. Faced with both freeways and jetliners, the California Zephyr began losing customers and ultimately became a drain on corporate resources. The cream of eastbound perishable freight traffic still left Central California on Espee or Santa Fe rails, while westbound high-value merchandise moved by truck. WP's economic
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