I’m sure you all know about the Central Pacific, one of the railroads that helped complete the transcontenental RR back in 1869. But what ever became of that little RR? Forgive me on my lack of knowledge on prototype railroads.
Central Pacific became part of Southern Pacific.
And now Southern pacific is owned by the Union Pacific, a large corporate conglomerate bent on controlling the massive sums of money spent by the model railroading public!
Central pacific aquired Southern Pacific in 1868 and merging with it in 1885, Note that SP is really CP (the aquirer kept the aquiree’s name). about a century later, SP aquired and merged with UP and kept the UP name. Eerie isn’t it that means UP is actually CP and this is pretty ironic considering the two were the ones that built the first transcontiental are now one road.
Many of the SP steam locomotives assigned to the Donner Pass run (ex-Central Pacific mainline) were lettered with a very small C.P. under their number boards, especially some of the earlier AC Cab-Forward classes. Actually, the Central Pacific kept its identity until the diesel era in the 1960’s, even though locomotives and cars were lettered for Southern Pacific. Near Arden Way in Sacramento, between Sacramento and Roseville, there is still a small aluminum signal house still lettered C.P.
Tom
Whoa someone really did some digging to find this. I posted this almost a year ago!