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Stranded streamliner
By | January 10, 2002 {sic; they mean 2012}

Sixty years ago, an intense winter storm trapped 226 people aboard the City of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada mountains



A helicopter view of the westbound City of San Francisco buried in snow on Donner Pass.
Doug Wornom collection

Sixty years ago, on January 13, 1952, the streamlined transcontinental passenger train City of San Francisco encountered a raging blizzard with 90-mph wind gusts and snow drifts 8 to 12 feet deep that marooned the train high in the snow-swept Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

Rescue crews worked around the clock to reach the stranded streamliner, but the storm proved too much for the men and their snow-fighting machines. ... For three days, the 226 passengers and crew were trapped aboard the train. This is the story of the heroic efforts by the Southern Pacific Railroad to free train No. 101 from “the Hill.”

Day 1, Sunday Jan. 13 – Snowbound

Intense winter storms and record snowfalls are commonplace on Donner Pass, Southern Pacific’s route through the Sierras. Since its discovery in 1844, the mountain passageway has claimed its share of victims, including the party of settlers after whom the pass was named. (For more information on the Donner party, see the note at the end of this story.)

But in January 1952, even Southern Pacific’s big steam-driven rotary snowplows, Jordan spreaders, and flangers were hard-pressed to keep the Sacramento Division’s Mountain District open. ... Rather than shut down the line, SP management made the decision to run its priority trains behind rotary plows dispatched to keep the route open. The westbound City of San Francisco, a streamliner jointly operated by Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Chicago & North Western, pulled up to the snowsheds at Norden – the top of the grade at an elevation of nearly 7,000 feet – and waited.

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One of Southern Pacific’s rotary snowplows involved in the rescue effort, seen outside Emigrant Gap where it ran out of fuel.
Southern Pacific

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Southern Pacific section workers, who cleared out switches and tracks by hand, were at the front lines of the rescue effort.
Southern Pacific

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A Pacific, Gas & Electric Sno-Cat, the only machine that could cross the drifts and snowbanks in the high Sierras.
PG&E news bureau

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Passengers carefully make their way alongside the ice-encrusted streamliner on their way to safety.
Southern Pacific

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A rotary plow seen clearing a path near Emigrant Gap ahead of the rescue train on the afternoon of Jan. 16.
Southern Pacific

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