Thursday, September 19, 2013

Dave's Depots: Union Pacific/Central Pacific/Southern Pacific Depot-Corinne, Utah

David writes.....

For those of you who haven't been there, Promontory Summit, Utah is literally out in the middle of nowhere.  Today, if you went there, the closet thing of interest is a rocket fuel plant, some ranches and the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake.  After Southern Pacific built the Lucin Cutoff in the early 1900s, the line through Promontory became a secondary route and was eventually mostly pulled up in 1942.  The only track that remains, other than the mile of reconstructed track at the golden spike site, is a segment from Brigham City to Corinne, which mainly provides a load-out point for sections of solid fuel rockets.  


Out along this lonely streach of highway stands the remains of the Corinne depot, built in 1870 as the Central Pacific freight depot.  A passenger station originally was located across the tracks.  By 1917 when Union Pacific's Oregon Short Line was using the facility, the passenger functions had been merged into the building.  Now owed by the Golden Spike Heritage Foundation, ambitious plans are afoot to restore the depot as part of a grander plan to run passenger trains from Ogden to the Golden Spike National Historic Site park boundaries as an alternative means to bring people to Promontory.


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