No. 119 was stationed in Ogden, Utah, in 1869 when a call came from Union Pacific Railroad vice-president Thomas C. Durant, for an engine to take him to Promontory Ridge, Utah Territory, for the Golden Spike ceremony celebrating the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Just as misfortune had struck the Central Pacific'sAntelope that Leland Stanford had been traveling on, so it impacted the fate of the original engine he had been traveling on. He was aboard the so-called Durant Special headed for the ceremony at Promontory. A swollen river had washed away some supports to the Devil's Gate Bridge. Durant's engineer refused to take his engine across, consenting only to nudging the lighter passenger cars over the span. It held, but this left Durant and his entourage without an engine. No. 119 was sent from Ogden to take them the short distance to Promontory, where it was memorialized in photos and history faced nose to nose with the Central Pacific's Jupiter. In Andrew J. Russell's famous photograph of the Meeting of the Lines, No. 119 is seen on the right with its engineer, Sam Bradford, leaning off the pilot holding a bottle of champagne up to Jupiter engineer George Booth. Bradford and Booth would later break a bottle of champagne over the other's locomotive in celebration.
Later career
119 led a similar life to Jupiter, in that after the Golden Spike run, it returned to service as a freight locomotive. However, like Jupiter, its historical significance was not realized until long after its scrapping in 1903.
Replicas
As was the case with the Jupiter, the Union Pacific only began to acknowledge the 119's historical significance well after it was scrapped. For a 1949 reenactment of the Golden Spike ceremony staged at the Chicago Railroad Fair the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad's locomotive number 35 was cosmetically altered stand-in for the 119; likewise the Jupiter was a proxy provided by the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. In 1968, the Union Pacific sponsored the construction of the Omaha Zoo Railroad in the Henry Doorly Zoo, including a narrow gauge replica of the 119, built by Crown Metal Products. The First Transcontinental Railroad, the National Park Service's Golden Spike site at Promontory, Utah, had exhibited representations of the 119 and Jupiter on a portion of restored track where the original ceremony was held. In this instance, the 119 was portrayed by the Virginia and Truckee's Dayton locomotive, and was displayed here until it and the Jupiter, which was portrayed by that railroad's Inyo, were sold to the state of Nevada in 1974. In 1975, the National Park Service embarked on a project to reproduce the Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific Jupiter exactly as they appeared in 1869. Since the original drawings had not survived, the Park Service initially approached Walt Disney Studios, which had previously built two steam engines from scratch for their Disneyland park's railroad, for the project. Disney declined, but recommended the O'Connor Engineering Laboratories in Costa Mesa, California, for the task. Noted railroad historian and steam engine owner Gerald M. Best served as engineering consultant to the Park Service for the project. Over 700 detailed engineering drawings were recreated, based almost entirely on the photographs taken of the engines during the ceremony. Disney animator and steam engine owner Ward Kimball did color matching and original artwork for the Jupiter and No. 119.
