This undated image provided by Amtrak shows the California Zephyr train near Truckee, Calif. The California Zephyr starts in Emeryville, Calif., near San Francisco, en route to Reno, Nev., a 236-mile journey that offers beautiful views as well as history. It crosses the Sierra Nevada mountain range and follows the same course as the historic Transcontinental Railroad, a 19th century engineering feat that bolstered the nation's western expansion. The Zephyr's ultimate destination is Chicago, a 51-hour trip from Emeryville. (AP Photo/Amtrak, Phil Gosney)Amtrak

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- The journey east on Amtrak's California Zephyr train is as good as the destination. Riding the rails from the San Francisco Bay Area to Reno, Nev., offers beautiful views and a tangible sense of history on the route over the Sierra Nevada that helped bring America together after the Civil War.


Now, 144 years after the Transcontinental Railroad's completion, train-loving children and picture-happy tourists pack the train's observation car to take in the Sierra Nevada and the Donner Pass mountain passage, once thought impossible to cross by locomotive.



By midmorning, we were rolling across flat farmland and orchards. We arrived in Sacramento just after 11 a.m. There, volunteer docents from the California State Railway Museum boarded. Later, over the public address system, they detailed the history of Donner Pass and the Transcontinental Railroad.

Donner Pass, the passage over the Sierra Nevada, received its name from the infamous group of pioneers from the Midwest who attempted to reach California during the winter of 1846-47 and were stranded. Of 87 travelers, 48 survived, with some resorting to cannibalism.

The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad over Donner Pass got under way after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. It took six years and the labor of more than 12,000 Chinese workers who laid track eastward from Sacramento. Riding through the tunnels toward Reno, it was hard not to imagine the backbreaking labor that went into creating them.

