Donner Pass: Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing

Southern Pacifics Sierra Crossing John R. Signor 8×11 – Hardbound 290 pages 492 illustrations maps profiles bibliography and index. This volume presents all you ever wanted to know about Southern Pacifics rail passage over Californias Donner Pass. At the summit over 90 feet of snow falls annually. Everything about the Sierra crossing was monumental: the grade the locomotives required to lift the trains over the Sierra the helper locomotives the tonnage handled and those unique snowsheds that protected the tracks from the record snowfall and rock slides.