Jupiter (locomotive)

Golden Spike Ceremony

The Jupiter was not Leland Stanford's original choice for transporting his party to the Golden Spike site. Originally, Stanford's train was to be pulled by another Central Pacific locomotive, the Antelope. For some distance, this train followed closely behind a regularly scheduled train pulled by the Jupiter. However, at one point the two trains were to go through a cut where a logging camp resided atop the hill. Apparently, either the Jupiter did not wear the proper flag to designate an extra following close behind, or the workers had failed to notice the flag. As a result, once the Jupiter passed, the workers rolled a large log down the mountain, which struck the Antelope. With the engine damaged, a message was sent to the upcoming station to hold the approaching train. There, Stanford's consist was added to the Jupiter's train.

Post-ceremony career

After the ceremony, Jupiter continued in service for the Central Pacific. In the 1870s, the railroad decided to end their practice of naming their engines, and thus, the Jupiter name was dropped and the engine was simply known as C.P. #60. The locomotive also received many new upgrades such as a new boiler, cowcatcher, domes, and smokestack. In 1891, the Southern Pacific, which acquired the Central Pacific in 1885, began renumbering its locomotives. As part of this renumbering, the former Jupiter engine #60 became S.P. #1195. In 1893 it was converted to burn coal, and later that year was sold to the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railroad and designated GVG&N #1. In 1909 the locomotive which no longer resembled the original Jupiter was sold to scrappers for $1,000.

Later reproductions

The Southern Pacific had not acknowledged the Jupiter's significance until well after the engine had been scrapped. For events such as the 1939 New York World's Fair and the Chicago Railroad Fair, a Jupiter locomotive was exhibited in celebration of the railroad's legacy, and operated in reenactments of the Golden Spike ceremony. However, this engine was actually the Virginia and Truckee Railroad's Genoa locomotive, that was cosmetically altered to resemble the Jupiter.

The 1939 film Union Pacific also featured a recreation of the ceremony, in which the Jupiter was portrayed by Virginia and Truckee Railroad's Inyo. The Inyo would again portray the Jupiter in 1969, when it was placed on display at the Golden Spike National Historic Site to celebrate the centennial of the Golden Spike.

In 1974, the National Park Service had approached O'Connor Engineering Laboratories of Costa Mesa, California, to construct exact, full-size replicas of the Jupiter and Union Pacific 119. As was the case with the engines themselves, no drawings or plans of the engines survived, necessitating entirely new drawings to be produced based mostly on photos of the engines as well as research done on similar engines built around the same time. That same year, the existing engines portraying the Jupiter and 119 (the latter portrayed by the Virginia and Truckee Railroad's Dayton), had been sold to the state of Nevada, though they remained displayed at the Golden Spike NHS until the construction of the new replicas was complete. Noted railroad historian and steam engine owner Gerald M. Best served as engineering consultant to the Park Service for the project. Former Disney animator Ward Kimball was given the task of painting the replicas. The Jupiter was given a bright red paint scheme with gold leafing, typical of locomotives built in the 1870s.

The replicas were completed in 1979, and began operations on May 10 of that year, 110 years after the original Golden Spike ceremony, and continue to make demonstration runs.

In the early 1990s, a vague description of the Jupiter's livery had been found in a recently uncovered March, 1869 issue of The Sacramento Bee, in which the engine was said to be blue, crimson, and gold. The engine was repainted into its current livery based on this finding along with further research on liveries of similar engines of the time. The repainted engine debuted on May 10, 1994, coinciding with the 125th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony.

Other historic Jupiter locomotives

Jupiter was known as "King of Gods" or "God of Sky", and it was common for railroads of the 1800s to name engines after this and other mythological legends to invoke awe and wonder. Thus, there have been many engines named "Jupiter" by their respective railroads that, apart from the name, had little else in common with the engine of Golden Spike fame. One such engine is Santa Cruz Railroad no. 3, also named Jupiter. This engine, owned by the Smithsonian Museum, is also a wood-burning 4-4-0. However, this engine was built for narrow-gauge track, unlike the broader standard gauge of the trains at the Golden Spike ceremony.

Media

The Disney film The Lone Ranger features a locomotive named for and modeled after the Jupiter engine, which attends a golden spike ceremony for the film's fictional Trans-Continental Railroad. The ceremony leads to a furious chase and fighting aboard both the Jupiter and the T.C.R.R.'s Constitution train, culminating in the Jupiter plunging off a damaged bridge and into the river below. The bluegrass band Railroad Earth has a song entitled "The Jupiter and the 119" about the meeting of the two trains.

In 2015, a Lego model depicting the Jupiter locomotive was submitted to the Lego Ideas website.