Southwest Trip - 1

Hi, Friends Dale Diacont, Jeremy Beck, and Jim Mixter joined me for a trip to Southern California and Arizona.  We left Washington on March 21 in the morning and returned the afternoon of April 2.  The plan was to follow the Sunset Route of UP into New Mexico, if possible, with time spent on 2 shortlines, Copper Basin and Arizona & Eastern, as well as Cajon and Tehachapi Passes.  As I will relate in later posts the best laid plans...

We landed about 40 minutes early, picked up our mini van and headed for Cajon Pass.  Our first photo location was at Keenbrook where the following 5 photos were taken.  Photos 1, 3 and 4 are of eastbound trains climbing the grade while photos 2 and 5 are of westbound trains dropping down grade.  In spite of having made a number of trips to Cajon this was a new location for me and there are more angles left to explore.

After leaving Keenbrook we headed uphill and stopped to explore Swarthout Canyon Road where we shot this westbound UP stack train.

Still further upgrade we stopped at Cajon Siding.  This westbound was photographed coming off the north track.

It was a very heavy manifest freight and had a pair of DPUs on the rear.

Our next to last stop for the day was at Cajon Junction, where the tracks pass under CA Route 138 using 3 separate underpasses.  Soon after we got there a BNSF stack train came up grade on their North Track.

A few minutes later UP sent a train up the Palmdale Cutoff.

Our final location was at Summit where we caught the same train we had photographed at Cajon Junction  coming through the cut there.

Our last shot of the day was of a westbound coming through a crossover from Track 1 to Track 2.  By doing so this train would go down the North Track instead of the South Track.

I hope you enjoyed the photos.  There are many more to come.