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[[Image:Donner_Pass_Track_1_Grade.jpg|thumb|left|300px|View of Donner Lake (left) and the abandoned CPRR/SPRR/UPRR Track #1 railroad grade over Donner Pass. (2003)]]Between [[1866]] and [[1868]], the [[Central Pacific Railroad]] built the summit portion of its original Sierra grade (Track #1) through Donner Pass. This section remained in continuous daily use from the day that the first CPRR passenger train ran through the 1,659-foot Tunnel #6 (The ''"Summit Tunnel"'') on June 18, [[1868]], until [[1993]] when the [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] (which had operated the [[Oakland]]-[[Ogden, Utah|Ogden]] CPRR line until its 1996 merger with the [[Union Pacific Railroad]]) abandoned and pulled up the 6.7 mile section of Track #1 over the summit running between Shed #41 at Norden (MP 192.1) and the covered crossovers in Shed #47 (MP 198.8) located about a mile East of the old flyover at Eder. Since then all East and Westbound traffic has been run about one mile South of Donner Pass over the Track #2 grade crossing the summit through the 10,322-foot long Tunnel #41 (aka'' "The Big Hole"'') running under Mt. Judah between Soda Springs and Eder. This change was made because the railroad considered Track #2 and Tunnel #41 (which was opened in [[1925]] when the summit section of the grade was finally double tracked) to be far easier and less expensive to maintain and keep open in the winter then the Track #1 tunnels and snowsheds over the Summit.[http://cprr.org/Museum/Sierra_Grade_8-2003/Donner_Pass-Summit_Tunnel/index.html]
In conjunction with major ongoing upgrades and expansions being made to the [[Port of Oakland]] in order to better accommodate the rapidly growing North American trade with Asia and the Pacific, the cooperation of the UPRR, the Port's principal rail partner, has been sought to ''"construct a second track and raise tunnel clearances over Donner Pass for container trains linking California with the rest of the country.''"[http://www.portofoakland.com/newsroom/pressrel/view.asp?id=26] To accomplish this objective would likely require the UP to either drive a second parallel tunnel next to Tunnel #41, or to restore and reopen the summit section of Track #1. Either infrastructure upgrade would increase the route's overall capacity, considerably simplify traffic management, and effectively eliminate delays currently caused by having to run all east and west bound traffic between Norden and Eder over a single track. [To fully eliminate the grade's "bottleneck" delays the now single track 7.1 mile section between Switch #9 (MP 171.9) and Shed #10 (MP 179.0) just west of Cisco would likely also have to be restored to double track.] Increasing tunnel and snowshed clearances on the Sierra grade would also permit the use of [[Intermodal_freight_transport#Double-stacked_container_transport|double-stacked container]] cars which now can only be run via the UP's [[Feather River]] grade.[http://www.robl.w1.com/Pix/I-960154.htm]
==Geography==
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