Pocatello, Idaho, is the southern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad's (UPRR's) Montana Subdivision, formally known as the Utah & Northern line, which stretched north to the former silver and copper mines of Butte, Montana.

     Rail lines used to vary in width. In August 1878, railroad workers constructed the Utah & Northern through Pocatello as a narrow-gauge line. In 1881, the standard-gauge Oregon Short Line was constructed to meet the Utah & Northern. Valuable time was lost as trains hit a bottleneck switching from standard to narrow gauge tracks. To make the switch, an ingenious contraption called a Ramsay transfer held each rail car aloft on a set of beams. Crews went below the cars and replaced standard gauge with narrow gauge trucks, and the cars rolled off onto the narrower line. The Ramsay transfer left cargo relatively undisturbed, but the process took time.[1]

     In 1886, UPRR management chose Pocatello as its new headquarters. To fix the Pocatello bottleneck, on July 24, 1887, the UPRR rebuilt the Utah Northern as a standard-gauge line. According to one worker, "it was a wonderful job. They laid the west rail of heavier steel, spiked it down, measured the place where the east rail should be, and drove the spikes on the east side of the rail that was not there yet. I did not realize at the time what an undertaking it was to get everything prepared beforehand. Then when we went to work in the morning at daylight, one set of fellows would go along and draw the spikes from the rail to be removed. They took up the little rail and laid a heavier rail… They had both new heavy rails laid before they started service. All done in a single day… They gave each man four silver dollars, and we wished they would widen the [rail] road every day.”[2]

Related Sites along the Union Pacific Railroad:

Dillon Depot, on the Union Pacific Railroad's Montana Division

Humphrey, Idaho on the Union Pacific Railroad's Montana Division

Credits and Sources:

[2] Merrill D. Beal, Intermountain Railroads, Standard and Narrow Gauge (Caldwell: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1962), 167.