No. 119

   This is No. 119 and she is famous for being one the two steam engines that met at Promontory Point, Utah, (Of course then it was called the Utah Territory) on the north end of the Great Salt Lake on May 10, 1869, to complete the Transcontinental Railroad. She carried Union Pacific Railroad Vice-President, Thomas Durant and other dignitaries to Promontory Summit from nearby Ogden, Utah, after the original engine Durant chose for the occasion was stranded on the wrong side of the Weber River in Ogden Canyon after a bridge on the line was damaged by heavy spring runoff.

   This is an exact replica of No. 119 (The original was sold for scrap in early 1900) built by O' Connor Engineering Laboratories of Costa Mesa, California after a challenge by the National Park Service in 1975. There were no blueprints to go from so O' Connor's team spent two years drawing them up from photographs and an Engineer's Handbook from 1870. Then they spent an additional two years building them.

   In 1979 on the 110th Anniversary of the original Golden Spike Ceremony, No. 119 and her famous cohort in time, the Jupiter, were reunited and christened with water from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

  Her partner, the Jupiter, will be the subject of another story on another day.