Donner Pass Snow Sheds: How the Central Pacific Roofed Over Its Railroad Through the Sierra

Full series — every video, in order:    • Engineering History from the Original Records   In the winter of eighteen sixty-seven to sixty-eight, the snow near the summit of the Sierra Nevada drifted so deep that in many places it filled the finished cuts back to their original level. In deep ravines, where embankments were needed, there were solid blocks of frozen snow ten to thirty feet deep. When crews went out to open the road, the snow had become so compact that plows could not move it. Nearly the whole track for fifteen miles had to be cleared with picks and shovels. ────────────────────────────── CHAPTERS 0:00 Fifteen Miles of Picks and Shovels 0:49 A Snow Belt Thirty-Five Miles Wide 1:55 The First Summer's Test 2:47 Thirty Miles, as Planned 4:16 How the Roofs Were Built 5:17 The Cost of the Roofs 6:45 Double Track and Tunnel 41 8:03 Better Snow-Fighting Equipment 8:47 Perhaps the Last Timber Shed, 1997 ────────────────────────────── IMAGES AND FOOTAGE Archival images and footage (31 items) are in the public domain or carry no known copyright restrictions. Present-day footage and photos credited to Pexels or Pixabay (9 items) are used under the Pexels License and the Pixabay Content License; they are not public domain, and they show the sites today, not archival records. National Archives and Records Administration (8) https://catalog.archives.gov/id/302012 Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-215 (8) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2413/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-208 (3) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2406/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-201 (3) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2399/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-211 (2) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2409/ Present-day footage · Pexels / Mazin Omron (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-o... Present-day footage · Pexels / Zuzanna Musial (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/pack-of-... Present-day footage · Pixabay / 1837081 (1) https://pixabay.com/videos/id-7729/ Present-day footage · Pexels / Florian Delée (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/dramatic... Present-day footage · Pexels / Djordje Vanjek (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/railway-... Present-day footage · Pexels / Vitaliy Haiduk (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-v... Present-day footage · Pexels / Kęstutis Paškevičius (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/winter-s... Present-day footage · Pexels / Yaroslav Shuraev (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/heavy-sn... Present-day footage · Pexels / K (1) https://www.pexels.com/video/a-railro... Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-207 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2405/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-197 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2395/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-203 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2401/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-213 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2411/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-209 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2407/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-202 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2400/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HAER CA-210 (1) https://www.loc.gov/item/ca2408/ No AI-generated imagery is used in this video. The 3D diagrams are schematic; dimensions and scale are not those of the actual structures, except where the narration gives them. The photographs of the line were made in 1997 for the Historic American Engineering Record.