Museum Cars

The Promontory was built in 1962 by the St. Louis Car Company as postal storage car No. 5779. It is the newest car in Union Pacific’s Heritage Passenger Car Fleet. The car was renamed the Promontory in 1993.

In 1990, a traveling museum car was designed for the Wyoming-Idaho Centennial train. Since then, the museum car has been used in numerous special trains and displayed at special events at various communities on the Union Pacific system. Carpeted walls permit exhibits to be changed to reflect special needs. When not in use for displays, it is often equipped as an exercise car for long trips.

Promontory Summit, Utah, the site selected for the joining of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads, is north of the Great Salt Lake. Completion of the railroad, the greatest engineering feat of the 19th Century, culminated in a celebration there on May 10, 1869. Promontory Point, often erroneously referred to as the location for the ceremony, juts out into the lake itself. It was the location of a saltworks for many years.

When Edward Harriman began the great rebuilding of the Harriman lines just after the turn of the century, the Lucin Cutoff was built across the Great Salt Lake, bypassing the original line through Promontory Summit. This was designed to move trains across Utah much faster and eliminate the old line around the northern edge of the lake. This cutoff touches the tip of Promontory Point. One of the steamboats used during the construction of the cutoff was named Promontory.

The original transcontinental line through Promontory was taken up for scrap in 1942.