Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge 32 Mins #SRP-SPNG $29.95 A superb evocation of the fabled Southern Pacific Narrow Gauge line that ran in the Owens Valley of California. Both Wilbur Whittaker and Mac Owen combined their talents to bring you this famous line. In 1880 the buccaneers of the Comstock Lode pushed a narrow gauge line into the mineral laden areas of central Nevada from their standard gauge Virginia and Truckee Railroad. Perhaps not as colorful and never as rich, the Carson and Colorado held perhaps greater intrigue. For 300 lonely miles it stretched south across the deserts. Seeking the end of the rainbow in California, it climbed higher than Donner Pass itself, more than 7000 feet above the desert floor and tunneled under the summit of Montgomery Pass. It then went skating down 3.2% grades into the Owens Valley and came to rest in the waiting arms of the South Pacific at Owenyo. The tracks across the high mountains were abandoned in 1938. This tape will show you the entire length of the line that survived from then until the ultimate abandonment in 1960. It paces freights from Owenyo (Lone Pine) both South to Keeler and North to Laws (Bishop). The mighty Sierras tower almost two vertical miles into a crystal blue as the diminutive trains chuff softly out of Owenyo in late Fall. Stations, bridges, water tanks, transfer docks and turntables en route are brilliantly lit against the highest mountain peaks in all America, already white with the first of winter. Glorious color. back