UtahRails.net Blog

With the recent announcement that the TRAX West Valley Line was “done”, I have once again realized that I’ve let things get scattered and hard to find.

To provide a place for the West Valley update I have created a separate page for the line, and each of UTA’s other TRAX lines: the Sandy Line (including the extension to Salt Lake Central Station), the University Line; the Airport Line; the Mid-Jordan Line; and the Draper Line, making a total of six light rail lines.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to cleanup and rearrange the pages for UTA’s FrontRunner Commuter Rail lines, including a separate index page and a separate page for the completed FrontRunner North Line between Salt Lake City and Ogden, and the FrontRunner South Line between Salt Lake City and Provo, to be completed in 2012.

TRAX Index Page | FrontRunner Index Page

I’ve been gathering newspaper stories and other bits of information that have been arriving via email, showing the progress of each of these lines. Now that each line has its own page, I can start compiling a timeline for each.

Union Pacific’s line between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles operated for most of its history as a subsidiary known as the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. That was the company’s name from 1916 until it was formally merged with Union Pacific in December 1987. A name change in August 1916 did away  with the original name of San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. By 1916, the district in Los Angeles known as San Pedro, near today’s Long Beach, had been annexed into the City of Los Angeles, and the separate name became redundant. Railroaders, being a conservative lot, seeming to avoid change at almost all cost, continued to refer to the Salt Lake Route as the “San Pedro”, and at times just the “Pedro”, a name that is still occasionally heard today among the operating crews.

Many non-railroad observers, when they see the “SP” part of the SPLA&SL abbreviation for San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake, are often confused, thinking that it denotes Southern Pacific, a much better known western railroad. Southern Pacific was a fierce competitor to Union Pacific for a large part of the Twentieth Century. The similarity of SP for San Pedro, and SP for Southern Pacific may have resulted in some confusion among investors and customers. So the name was changed, dropping the SP part of the Union Pacific-affiliated company.

The first oil well was dug in Los Angeles County in 1892, and within a few short years, oil was the local fuel of choice. In the 1920s, the Wilmington Field was opened, and remains today the third largest source for oil in the United States. Many of the oil wells were on railroad-owned land, making it the fuel of choice for southern California railroads, instead of burning coal, which was by far the fuel of choice for most of the nation’s railroads. The LA&SL burned oil in its steam locomotives, and oil refueling stations were provided at every locomotive fueling station between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

A recent question via email asked about photographs of San Pedro steam locomotives that obviously show that at least a few burned coal rather than oil. A bit of research found that the coal burning locomotives were assigned to SPLA&SL’s lines in Utah, north of the large division point at Caliente, Nevada. This was a holdover from the fact that LA&SL did not build any mainline tracks in Utah.

The Utah lines of Los Angeles & Salt Lake, as well as its predecessor San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake, were built by a different Union Pacific subsidiary, Oregon Short Line Railroad, usually known simply as O.S.L., or the “Short Line.” The OSL itself has a varied and rich history, but for this part of the story, the railroad is best known as owner of Union Pacific’s predecessor rail lines in Utah. These railroads were built by the Mormon roads, railroad companies organized and initially constructed by interests of the LDS church, and almost immediately sold to Union Pacific-controlled companies. In 1889, Union Pacific consolidated all of its lines in Utah and Idaho under the single name of Oregon Short Line & Utah Northern Railway.

With Union Pacific’s bankruptcy in 1893, and its subsequent release from receivership in 1898, it lost control of its subsidiaries, including OSL&UN, which itself was reorganized as the Oregon Short Line Railroad. Like its earlier parts, the new OSL was a coal-burning railroad, including its parts south from Salt Lake City, down to the end-of-the-line at Milford. At various times, Union Pacific sought to extend itself south and west from Milford, but as its financial fortunes waxed and waned, so too did its dreams to reach California. By 1898, California was just starting to become the economic powerhouse that it was throughout the Twentieth Century. Union Pacific wasn’t the only railroad that wanted to reach the region.

One of Utah’s top industrialists at that time was David Eccles. Working with other Utah investors, in 1898 Eccles organized the Utah & Pacific Railroad to build south from Milford, using the most modern and up-to-date materials and construction engineering, building on the abandoned grades started by earlier railroad companies that had tried to reach the mines of southern Nevada. Research today shows a definite connection and association between Eccles and OSL’s W. H. Bancroft, both in Utah, and Union Pacific’s E. H. Harriman on the national level.

Down in Los Angeles, a local road known as the Los Angeles Terminal Railroad, controlled by W. A. Clark, was growing rapidly, first south from Los Angeles to San Pedro harbor, then eastward across the Los Angeles Basin. In 1900 the Clark interests announced that they would build to Salt Lake City. This of course got Harriman’s attention, and the race was on. The story of how Utah & Pacific became UP’s projected line to California, as well as the battle between Clark and Harriman for rights through southern Nevada is one of the most interesting stories of western railroads, but is far too complex and lengthy to be covered here. In 1903 a compromise was reached that resulted in Harriman selling his OSL lines south of Salt Lake City to Clark’s San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad. In return, Harriman took half ownership of Clark’s San Pedro line.

As for oil-burning locomotives versus coal-burning locomotives on the San Pedro, the simple explanation is that coal was burned on the former OSL lines in Utah, and the practice was continued when San Pedro took over in 1903. By about 1918, to make train operations and locomotive assignments easier, all of San Pedro’s locomotives were converted to burn oil, and the locomotive fueling facilities in Utah were converted to furnish oil. Although seldom used after that, coal facilities at Caliente and points north, remained in place until the entire LA&SL was fully dieselized in 1948. I have added this small bit of new research to the SPLA&SL Steam Notes page, as well as to the notes for the locomotives that were coal burners in their early years.

SPLA&SL Steam Notes | SPLA&SL History | UP Steam Locomotives