Past Event
Thursday, May 16, 2019, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The Impossible Railroad: 100 Years of the SD&A
1752 Alpine Boulevard, Alpine, 91901
Cost: Free
Join us for a talk presented by the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association on the history of the San Diego & Arizona Railway. The SD&A rail line was called the “Impossible Railroad” by engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges, which included extreme terrain requiring 2.5 miles of bridges and trestles, and 21 tunnels, including 11 miles through the treacherous Carrizo Gorge, an area where cliffs dropped more than 1,000 feet to the bottom. Additional construction challenges included floods, landslides, fires, hot weather, deaths from the flu, sabotage by revolutionaries, and various delays caused by World War I.