California 3 2018 Cajon Barstow Needles

 Brian Sykes of Atlanta recently retired from the Norfolk Southern Railroad.  He asked me to join him on a railfan trip to southern California.  Here is what we did on Day 3.

We headed out for Cajon Pass.  This is a railfan's paradise and I was overwhelmed with the trains, grades, and scenery.  I had expected to find a long track or two heading up over the mountain and probably hard to access.  Wrong on all counts!  There are 4 mainline tracks on 3 different grades.  And with public land throughout the area, photo locations abound.

 Cajon Pass is a mountain pass between the San Bernardino Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains and located at he San Andreas Fault!  (No, we didn't experience any earthquake!)  It is located in the Mojave Desert and the tracks are used by the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroads.  California State Route 138 passes through the area and there are other roads as well as some very poor roads (trails) which require a 4-wheel drive vehicle.

Here are some trains at the base of the canyon.

Here is a Union Pacific train coming on the Palmdale Cutoff.  Just 5 minutes before, a wedding party had been taking pictures on the bridge the train is crossing.

You can see the grade this train is heading down.

And right behind it is a second UP train.  It is passing the famous Morman Rocks.  In 1851, a group of Mormon settlers traveled through Cajon Pass in covered wages on their way from Salt Lake City to southern California.  These prominent rocks are named in their honor.

Unfortunately, we could not find a way to get to famed Sullivan's Curve.  In the following photo, there are 4 tracks.  The original Southern Pacific track built in 1885 is a 3% grade, located near the top of the photo.  A double track main line, built in 1913, reduced the grade to 2.2% and had two tunnels.  And, the track the UP trains ran on is the Palmdale Cutoff track.  Tracks have reconfigured numerous times to reduce grade and curvature and the tunnels were 'daylighted.'

We head near the top of the pass or the Summit and grab these shots.

 

Here is a shot from 2015 of Summit, Brian Sykes collection.

At Summit, the top of the pass, there formerly was a station and a wye track for turning engines.  Nothing remains except for this marker.

More great scenery.

We will be back here the next day so we head for Barstow and Needles and our B&B.  We are hungry and find this 'Barstow Station' eatery featuring a railroad motif.

And we head down to the beautiful Barstow depot.  Opened in 1911, the old depot was originally a Harvey House known as the "Casa del Desierto"; today it houses various museums, a visitors center and city offices.  Harvey Houses were large dining rooms where train passengers could eat before going to their next destination.
Fred Harvey started his restaurant chain in Kansas.  Prior to that, passengers did not have time to eat the food they ordered and paid for at a station stop.  The restaurants at that time were dirty, uninviting and had bad food.  The train engineers were often in cahoots with the restaurants and shared in the profits made for the food not eaten (and reserved to the next set of passengers, who could not eat the food either!)
Mr. Harvey hired women between the ages of 18 and 30 who were unmarried, attractive, and they could not get married while employed by him.  The Fred Harvey girls would serve a 4-course meal in 30 minutes!

 And, since it was Sunday, this excellent Museum was open.  It is formally called the Western America Railroad Museum.

They have a super collection of memorabilia and the museum is manned by volunteers.  The head man hired on as a track laborer in 1953 and advanced to Trainmaster at Barstow, retired in 1995.  He greeted us this day.

I was really impressed with this date nail collection.  They are grouped by various railroad from around the country and are on all 4 walls plus display cases in the middle.  There are THOUSANDS of different date nails and they were collected by a railroad employee.

 Back outside, there is a nice collection of rolling stock, mostly locomotives and cabooses.

Outside, there is a highway overpass over the rail yard where many photos are taken.  We didn't walk back there to get pix.

Time to head to Needles.  Instead of taking the Interstate, we take historic Route 66!!!

We saw 20 trains between Barstow and Needles.  All were container trains or manifests but we found this train loaded with Army vehicles.

Many times we saw opposing trains and MANY times we were right at the meeting point!

 TRAINS magazine reports that BNSF will lay a fourth track for 4 miles through Needles in 2018.   Enjoy some desert scenery!!

And, again we are in the exact position for a meet.