OK, I’m confused about a recent article in The Tribune, “Ogden’s 25th Street: Notorious past colors a walkable present.” In that article, Weber State University’s Sarah Langston was quoted as saying that, “the [Ogden] station was, for decades, the jumping-off point for wayward travelers … [because] the station is where the Union Pacific’s trains from the east and the Central Pacific’s trains from the west met. The two railroads didn’t use the same gauge for their rails, so people had to transfer from one to the other for the journey cross-country.”
That didn’t make sense to me as the two railroad companies met 53 miles north-west of the Ogden Station at Promontory in May of 1869 to pound in the Golden Spike, thus connecting the two sections, forming the first transcontinental railroad.
So, I checked that statement and found an article from Kansas City’s Linda Hall Library that states, “Both the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads laid rails with the four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch gauge while building the transcontinental railroad.”
That makes more sense to me. In order to be a true trans-continental railroad, it should be able to carry passengers and cargo cross country without having to make any sort of transfer.
Michael Wilson, West Valley City