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32-659: The Western Pacific Railroad ( reporting mark WP ) was a Class I railroad in the United States . It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route directly competed with SP's portion of the Overland Route for rail traffic between Salt Lake City / Ogden, Utah , and Oakland, California , for nearly 80 years. The Western Pacific

64-695: A 2-digit code indicating the vehicle's register country . The registered keeper of a vehicle is now indicated by a separate Vehicle Keeper Marking (VKM), usually the name of the owning company or an abbreviation thereof, which must be registered with the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) and the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) and which is unique throughout Europe and parts of Asia and Northern Africa. The VKM must be between two and five letters in length and can use any of

96-611: A group of investors that included Utah Senator Reed Smoot and the president of the Western Pacific Railroad , planning for the new railway began in 1916, and it was constructed the following year. The new line began at the small town of Wendover , on the Utah/Nevada border, where a connection was made with the Western Pacific. From Wendover, the railroad headed straight south through the salt desert,

128-464: A hyphen. Some examples: When a vehicle is sold it will not normally be transferred to another register. The Czech railways bought large numbers of coaches from ÖBB. The number remained the same but the VKM changed from A-ÖBB to A-ČD. The UIC introduced a uniform numbering system for their members based on a 12-digit number, largely known as UIC number . The third and fourth digit of the number indicated

160-700: A main line north from the Feather River Canyon to the Great Northern Railway in northern California. This route, today part of BNSF's Gateway Subdivision , joined the Oakland ;– Salt Lake City main line at the Keddie Wye , a unique combination of two steel trestles and a tunnel forming a triangle of intersecting track . In 1935, the railroad went bankrupt because of decreased freight and passenger traffic caused by

192-700: A predecessor of the CNW, from which the UP inherited it. Similarly, during the breakup of Conrail , the long-retired marks of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad (NYC) were temporarily brought back and applied to much of Conrail's fleet to signify which cars and locomotives were to go to CSX (all cars labeled NYC) and which to Norfolk Southern (all cars labeled PRR). Some of these cars still retain their temporary NYC marks. Because of its size, this list has been split into subpages based on

224-458: Is traveling over, which shares the information with other railroads and customers. In multinational registries, a code indicating the home country may also be included. The Association of American Railroads (AAR) assigns marks to all carriers, under authority granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board , Transport Canada , and Mexican Government. Railinc , a subsidiary of the AAR, maintains

256-646: The Great Depression and had to be reorganized. Western Pacific (WP) operated the California Zephyr passenger train with the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad . The WP handled the "Silver Lady" from Oakland, California, to Salt Lake City, Utah from 1949 to 1970. The Western Pacific owned several connecting short-line railroads . The largest

288-669: The TTX Company (formerly Trailer Train Company) is named for its original reporting mark of TTX. In another example, the reporting mark for state-funded Amtrak services in California is CDTX (whereas the usual Amtrak mark is AMTK) because the state transportation agency ( Caltrans ) owns the equipment used in these services. This may also apply to commuter rail, for example Metrolink in Southern California uses

320-513: The 26 letters of the Latin alphabet . Diacritical marks may also be used, but they are ignored in data processing (for example, Ö is treated as though it is O ). The VKM is preceded by the code for the country (according to the alphabetical coding system described in Appendix 4 to the 1949 convention and Article 45(4) of the 1968 convention on road traffic), where the vehicle is registered and

352-679: The Union Pacific Corporation purchased the Western Pacific in 1982, the WP became part of a combined Union Pacific rail system: the Union Pacific Railroad, the Missouri Pacific Railroad , and the WP. The Union Pacific maintains one locomotive in its fleet, Union Pacific 1983 , in a Western Pacific influenced livery . The California Zephyr was the famous Western Pacific passenger train but

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384-682: The VKM BLS. Example for an "Einheitswagen" delivered in 1957: In the United Kingdom, prior to nationalisation, wagons owned by the major railways were marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway concerned; for example, wagons of the Great Western Railway were marked "G W"; those of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway were marked "L M S", etc. The codes were agreed between

416-466: The acquiring company discontinues the name or mark of the acquired company, the discontinued mark is referred to as a "fallen flag" railway. Occasionally, long-disused marks are suddenly revived by the companies which now own them. For example, in recent years, the Union Pacific Railroad has begun to use the mark CMO on newly built covered hoppers, gondolas and five-bay coal hoppers. CMO originally belonged to Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway ,

448-500: The active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Under current practice, the first letter must match the initial letter of the railroad name. As it also acts as a Standard Carrier Alpha Code , the reporting mark cannot conflict with codes in use by other nonrail carriers. Marks ending with the letter "X" are assigned to companies or individuals who own railcars, but are not operating railroads; for example,

480-470: The east. The Deep Creek Railroad was rapidly and inexpensively built, with minimal earthworks and a small roster of used equipment. The railroad owned only two steam locomotives, both of which came second-hand from the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad . A single passenger car and one boxcar completed the roster. Ore from the mines was carried in freight cars belonging to connecting railroads. By 1918,

512-448: The first letter of the reporting mark: A railway vehicle must be registered in the relevant state's National Vehicle Register (NVR), as part of which process it will be assigned a 12-digit European Vehicle Number (EVN). The EVN schema is essentially the same as that used by the earlier UIC numbering systems for tractive vehicles and wagons , except that it replaces the 2-digit vehicle owner's code (see § Europe 1964 to 2005 ) with

544-747: The last link from Sacramento to Oakland, this company was absorbed into the Central Pacific Railroad in 1870. The second company to use the "western pacific" appellation was the Western Pacific Railway Company , founded in 1903. Under the direction of George Jay Gould I , the Western Pacific Railway proposed to build a standard gauge track connection to the Pacific Coast for his aspiring Gould transcontinental system . Construction

576-481: The late 1800s, prospectors began exploring the remote Deep Creek Mountains of far west-central Utah, and a brief gold -mining boom resulted in the establishment of the small town of Gold Hill in 1892. The town's initial period of prosperity was relatively short-lived, but the promise of a second boom surfaced in the 1910s with the development of copper -mining properties in the Gold Hill area. The rapid growth in

608-518: The owner of a reporting mark is taken over by another company, the old mark becomes the property of the new company. For example, when the Union Pacific Railroad (mark UP) acquired the Chicago and North Western Railway (mark CNW) in 1995, it retained the CNW mark rather than immediately repaint all acquired equipment. Some companies own several marks that are used to identify different classes of cars, such as boxcars or gondolas. If

640-405: The owner, or more precisely the keeper of the vehicle. Thus each UIC member got a two-digit owner code . With the introduction of national vehicle registers this code became a country code. Some vehicles had to be renumbered as a consequence. The Swiss company BLS Lötschbergbahn had the owner code 63. When their vehicles were registered, they got numbers with the country code 85 for Switzerland and

672-407: The railroad had a few others: There were twelve presidents of the railroad: Reporting mark In North America , the mark, which consists of an alphabetic code of two to four letters, is stenciled on each piece of equipment, along with a one- to six-digit number. This information is used to uniquely identify every such rail car or locomotive, thus allowing it to be tracked by the railroad it

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704-419: The railroad had become a subsidiary of the Western Pacific, which financially supported the line due to the connecting freight traffic it generated. Unfortunately for the new railroad, the mines in the Gold Hill area enjoyed only a short productive life. Usable copper deposits began to diminish by 1920, and although the railroad also carried tungsten and arsenic produced near Gold Hill, mineral production in

736-511: The railways and registered with the Ministry of Railways , Government of India . Deep Creek Railroad The Deep Creek Railroad is a defunct railroad company that constructed and operated a line between Wendover and Gold Hill , Utah , a distance of about 45 miles. It was constructed in 1917 to serve a mining district in the Gold Hill vicinity and existed for 22 years before succumbing to perennially weak traffic levels. Beginning in

768-762: The railways and registered with the Railway Clearing House . In India, wagons owned by the Indian Railways are marked with codes of two to four letters, these codes normally being the initials of the railway divisions concerned along with the Hindi abbreviation; for example, trains of the Western Railway zone are marked "WR" and "प रे"; those of the Central Railway zone are marked "CR" and "मध्य", etc. The codes are agreed between

800-820: The reporting mark SCAX because the equipment is owned by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority —which owns the Metrolink system—even though it is operated by Amtrak. This is why the reporting mark for CSX Transportation , which is an operating railroad, is CSXT instead of CSX. Private (non-common carrier) freight car owners in Mexico were issued, up until around 1990, reporting marks ending in two X's, possibly to signify that their cars followed different regulations (such as bans on friction bearing trucks) than their American counterparts and so their viability for interchange service

832-455: The right-of-way only 30 feet east of the Nevada state line. The tangent was broken only by the need to bypass a small hill, causing the railroad to dip into Nevada for approximately one-half mile. From there, the railroad angled southeast, following the edge of the desert into the Gold Hill area. The railroad's main line terminated in Gold Hill, although a short branch accessed the mines just to

864-497: The use of electricity during the period created a strong demand for copper, and nearby mining districts near Ely, Nevada and Bingham Canyon, Utah were highly successful copper producers; Gold Hill's promoters hoped that its mines would fall into the same league. The need for a reliable and inexpensive method of shipping ore from these mines was the impetus for construction of the Deep Creek Railroad. Supported by

896-795: Was financed by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad , a company in the Gould system, which had lost access to California due to the attempted acquisition of the Southern Pacific Railroad by the Rio Grande's main rival, the Union Pacific Railroad. The Western Pacific Railway acquired the Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad and began construction on what became known as the Feather River Route. Completed in 1909, it

928-580: Was impaired. This often resulted in five-letter reporting marks, an option not otherwise allowed by the AAR. Companies owning trailers used in trailer-on-flatcar service are assigned marks ending with the letter "Z", and the National Motor Freight Traffic Association , which maintains the list of Standard Carrier Alpha Codes, assigns marks ending in "U" to owners of intermodal containers . The standard ISO 6346 covers identifiers for intermodal containers. When

960-600: Was one of the original operators of the California Zephyr passenger line. In 1982, the Western Pacific was acquired by the Union Pacific Corporation and it was soon merged into the Union Pacific Railroad . The original Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was established in 1862 to build the westernmost portion of the first transcontinental railroad , between Sacramento and San Jose , California (later to Oakland). After completing

992-906: Was the Sacramento Northern Railway , which once reached from San Francisco to Chico, California. Others included the Tidewater Southern Railway , the Central California Traction , the Indian Valley Railroad and the Deep Creek Railroad . In December 1953, the Railroad retired its last steam locomotive from revenue service. At the end of 1970, WP operated 1,187 miles (1,910 km) of road and 1,980 miles (3,190 km) of track, not including its Sacramento Northern and Tidewater Southern subsidiaries. After

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1024-459: Was the last major rail line connected to California. After Western Pacific Railway Company defaulted on mortgage bonds, its assets were sold in 1916 to The Western Pacific Railroad Company . The original line used 85 lb/yd rail on untreated ties, with no tie plates except on curves over one degree; in 1935 more than half of the main line still had its original rail, most of it having carried 150 million gross tons. In 1931 Western Pacific opened

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