ON TRACK WITH RAILROAD HISTORY GET EXTRA PERSPECTIVE ON BEGINNINGS OF TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAIN TRAVEL.

Byline: - Eric Noland

The train strained to climb the mountain slope west of Truckee, and an icy October wind struck us full in the face as we leaned out the vestibule half-door.

There were other reasons to feel a chill: Down the mountainside from the train tracks lay Donner Lake, where a hapless party of pioneers found the autumn to be infinitely more inhospitable in 1846.

Steve Patterson, a former train engineer who lectures on American Orient Express trains, pointed to the mountain summit and hollered excitedly over the noise of the engine: ``See those snow sheds and tunnels up there? That's the original route. It went right around that mountain up into the Donner Pass. That's just the way Judah laid it out.

``That's the backbone of the Sierra. They went around it. We're going to go right through it.''

Moments later, the train plunged into a modern tunnel, and continued on a route that shadows a remarkable achievement of the 19th century.

The transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, in Promontory, Utah, magically shortening the length of a cross-country journey from several months to one week. Today, between Sacramento and Wells, Nev., American Orient Express and Amtrak California Zephyr passenger trains make their way along that original route, as charted by Central Pacific Railroad founder Theodore Judah.

For Central Pacific construction crews, some of the roughest going was through these steep Sierra slopes. According to Stephen Ambrose's chronicle of the rail construction, ``Nothing Like It In the World,'' there were 44 separate storms during the winter of 1866-67, some of which dropped 10 feet of snow at a time in the mountains.

Chinese railroad workers, assigned the task of blasting tunnels through solid granite, died in untold numbers from black-powder explosions and in avalanches triggered by the blasts. Even when not working, they had to live in tunnels that they'd carved into the snowdrifts.

On this train, through this stretch, it borders on embarrassing to reflect on their privations while dining on seafood vol-au-vent with brandy cream sauce in a luxurious dining car.

The rail bed they carved was later circumvented by the modern tunnel through which today's trains pass, but passengers can still spot the original, clinging to the precipitous slopes of Donner Pass.

Through western Nevada, meanwhile, the tracks follow the Humboldt River, a critical source of water for the estimated half-million pioneers who traveled the California Emigrant Trail west between 1841 and 1869, when the railroad was completed.

The Donner Party was just one of many to pass this way.

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Photo:

Passengers on an American Orient Express train take in the scenery of western Nevada from the dome car.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor