Baggage Recreation Cars
The Council Bluffs
The Council Bluffs orginally was built as a baggage car for Union Pacific. Details of its early history are not available. It was converted for use as a baggage recreation car for a special train sent to the U.S. political conventions in 2000.
Abraham Lincoln designated Council Bluffs as the Eastern Terminus for Union Pacific in 1863 and it remained so for 130 years, until the merger with the Chicago and North Western in 1995. As railroads from the East arrived in Council Bluffs in 1867, their tracks ended at river's edge. Locomotives, cars and other supplies were then ferried across the Missouri River to Union Pacific tracks on steamboats. When the railroad bridge over the Missouri River was completed in March 1873, the final link in the transcontinental railroad was completed.
Under the leadership of Thomas Durant, Union Pacific began construction in 1866 of a large shop complex in Omaha, not Council Bluffs as Lincoln had ordered. This oversight remained a sore point until 1874 when the city of Council Bluffs sued Union Pacific to force acknowledgment that the Eastern end of the railroad should be Council Bluffs. The city won, and in 1876 Union Pacific begain construction of a large transfer depot at the east end of their mile long approach to the Missouri River Bridge.
Fire destroyed the first transfer depot and a grand brick building with depot and hotel opened for business in 1878. It had the finest and largest bar between Chicago and Denver. A sign in the waiting room noted that "the West begins here." In 1939, during Golden Spike Days, UP Chairman Averell Harriman dedicated the Golden Spike Monument in Council Bluffs, at milepost zero, the beginning of Union Pacific.
The yards and engine terminal expanded as business grew. Because of its position at the eastern end of Union Pacific, Council Bluffs remained an active transfer point between UP and the seven eastern railroads, all converging on the UP yards. While freight could be passed through by the car load, mail could not. So by WWII, Council Bluffs became the largest mail transfer point in the U.S. Mail transfer remained an important part of Union Pacific's place in Council Bluffs until the early 1970s. The yards remain as an important point on Union Pacific today.
The Pony Express
The Pony Express was built in 1957 by American Car & Foundry as postal storage car No. 5714. It was rebuilt as a baggage-recreation car for ski train service between Los Angeles, California; Sun Valley, Idaho; and Park City, Utah. It was renamed the Pony Express in 1993 to commemorate a Union Pacific train of the same name that ran between Denver, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah, from August 1926 to November 1954.
Both were named in honor of the nation's first fast overland mail service. Organized and operated by the widely known firm of cross-country freighters, Russell, Majors and Waddell of Nebraska City, Nebraska, the Pony Express route ran very near what was to become the Union Pacific Railroad from about Grand Island, Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah.
The first westbound Pony Express rider left St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 6, 1860, and reached San Francisco April 13. The first eastbound mail left San Francisco April 3, and reached St. Joseph April 13. Each rider had a special saddle designed for quick changes of horses at stations along the route.
This horseback overland mail service ended in November 1861, following completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line.
The Union Pacific Museum collection includes an original saddle used by Pony Express riders.