Union Pacific in the Blue Mountains DVD

As the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company climbed out of the Columbia River Valley near present day Hinkle while on its trek towards meeting the Union Pacific Railroad at Huntington on the Snake River, it encountered the Blue Mountain range in northeastern Oregon. The track that it constructed through this land of snow-capped mountains, sagebrush covered desert, and lush mountain valleys remains one of the Union Pacific’s greatest mountain challenges as trains up to 20,000 tons conquer three separate summits on their way to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. And the most difficult and westernmost of these climbs is the line through the main Blue Mountain range west of La Grande, Oregon, the subject of this program. While multiple helper sets used to roam these grades, today this line is ruled by radio controlled slave units with the power distributed at up to three points in the train. This DVD shows over 24 hours of ear-splitting action on the two percent grades of UP’s La Grande subdivision in the Blue Mountains in May of 2018. This DVD is two hours and twelve minutes in length and can be watched with or without narration.