MRE Mag issue 17 August-October 2019

the souvenir shop we got a head’s up from one of the museum officials that #4014 had sneaked out for a test run the day before. He showed us some footage that had been posted on the web. We then headed off to our motel, grabbed a bite to eat and called it a night as we had an early start for a morning flight.

4th May - We took an internal flight to Salt Lake City (SLC) and on arrival headed for the Alamo rental desk to pick up our hire car. We upgraded to a GMC Acadia SUV - a better vehicle for the second leg of our journey. The nice man behind the desk rolled in additional drivers for free along with the collision damage waiver cover. Okay the vehicle was white and had ski racks, but it was going to be more practical for us than a sedan and the 3.6 litre V6 would devour the miles we were planning to cover. We managed a couple of hours of train chasing before calling it a night.

5th May – We headed out to Promontory Point, the original site of the 1869 meeting between the Central Pacific (CP) and the UP. We were there just in time for the re-enactment of the meeting of the two locomotives - Jupiter and #119. This re-enactment occurs 10.30 hrs most days and in the glorious sunshine it was a good start to the second leg of the trip. The whole proceedings were managed by National Park Rangers who provided informed commentary as to the history 70