With Feather River Canyon just around the corner, and confirmed to launch on Monday, February 15th, make sure you’re up to scratch with the route’s fascinating history, iconic locations and remarkable locomotives by reading our collection of articles written by the highly respected railroad author, Gary Dolzall.

Feather River Magic

The Western Pacific Railroad stretched more than 1,000 miles across the American West, from Salt Lake City, Utah to California’s Bay Area. And yet, so remarkable, so scenic, and so famous was WP’s canyon path along the “El Rio de la Plumas” and through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that the railroad proudly called itself the “Feather River Route.”

Feather River U-Boats

Tractive effort, lots of it. That’s what Western Pacific was looking for in the late 1960s to help tame the rugged Feather River Canyon route and move its tonnage. And Western Pacific found its solution in General Electric’s 3,000-horsepower U30B diesel locomotive.

The Silver Lady

She was called the “Silver Lady” by those who admired her, and she was the ultimate stainless steel expression of America’s post-World War II “streamliner era.” On a journey of 2,532 miles, she crossed the great American west, from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area, for more than two decades, bearing the train numbers “17” and “18” over each of her three owner railroads. Her journey carried travellers, riding in sparkling dome cars and comfortable sleepers, across the plains of America’s Heartland on the Burlington Route, through the magnificent Rockies on the Rio Grande, and over the Sierra Nevada on Western Pacific’s Feather River Canyon rails.

She was the California Zephyr.

A Place Called Keddie

North America is home to many remarkable and famed railroad landmarks, from the likes of New York Grand Central Terminal to Pennsylvania’s Horseshoe Curve, from Chicago’s steel “Racetrack” to Washington State’s Cascade Tunnel. And among the continent’s notable locations stands a remote place where silver trestles rise high over the rushing waters of Spanish Creek and the growl of diesels denote yet another battle with the unforgiving canyons and cliffs of the Sierra Nevada. That place is Keddie, California.

Covered Wagons in the Canyon

Electro-Motive’s legendary “F-unit” diesel locomotives, which debuted in 1939 with the FT model, were the most important and influential North American locomotives of the twentieth century, and were largely responsible for the transition from steam to diesel locomotion by the U. S. railroads during the 1940s and 1950s.

America’s Most Awesome Railroad: A Developer Insight

https://youtu.be/kYZbpivUNH4