My wife and I  recently spent a week in Ogden, Utah attending the 2014 UNION PACIFIC HISTORICAL SOCIETY annual convention. I spent some time photographing subjects related to the Union Pacific Railroad in and around Ogden, Utah. These are a sampling of these images.

The beehive charcoal oven is located near Cedar City, Utah within a state historical site devoted to the early smelting of local iron ore into iron ingots for local consumption. Images of the Ogden Depot museum displays and nearby railroad operations are included. A re-enactment of the driving of the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was photographed at Promontory summit.

Of particular interest is the competition between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads to maximize the miles of railroad laid by each. Before the U.S. Congress finally specified Promontory summit as the meeting point of the two railroads, each railroad company just kept on laying track past the meeting point with the result there came into being two competing roadbeds for many miles. Evidence of this is plainly seen within the National historic site. Perhaps the most striking evidence of this is the Central pacific’s “big fill” located just East of Promontory Summit. The Union Pacific built a wooden trestle nearby. The fill still exists and the features of the trestle site are easily discerned. The UPRR wisely abandoned the trestle soon after the completion of the Pacific Railroad in favor of the fill.

Replicas of the Central Pacific “Jupiter” and Union Pacific “119” operate during the daily re-enactment at the Nation Historic Site. As the images show, locomotives of those times were very colorful indeed.