Its detour time! Due to four consecutive wet winters, Utah's Great Salt Lake rose to a record height of 4211.6 feet above sea level by 1986-87. This gave the Southern Pacific operational headaches along its earthen causeway west of Ogden, Utah. While MOW crews worked to shore up the route across the lake, UP granted the SP trackage rights to detour trains along the former Western Pacific line west of Salt Lake City. One of the SP's hottest central corridor trains, the Chicago to Oakland trailers is photographed emerging from the Skull Valley area along the Cricket Mountains at Marblehead. For a few months in 1986, the old WP was a very busy place to watch trains until SP's causeway was reopened for service later that summer.
