SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System is seeking new partners in its ongoing effort to reopen the 70-mile former San Diego & Arizona Eastern line from Tecate, Mexico, to Plaster City, Calif., the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The agency has owned the line since 1979 and made several attempts to reopen the route. It hopes the line can serve as a link from San Diego and Mexico to eastern markets in the United States without having to pass through Los Angeles. The line connects to Union Pacific near El Centro, Calif. It is currently in use from San Diego to Tecate, near Tijuana, and by the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum near Campo, Calif.
The line was incorporated as the San Diego & Arizona Railway by entrepreneur John D. Spreckels and dubbed “The Impossible Railroad” when it was completed in 1919. The line features 17 tunnels and 57 bridges, most of which would need rebuilding or repair. The route includes Goat Creek Trestle, one of the largest curved railroad trestles in the world. In 1932, Spreckels’ heirs sold their interests to the Southern Pacific, who operated it as the San Diego & Arizona Eastern until 1979, when the line was sold to MTS for $18.1 million. It was leased and operated by Kyle Railways until 1983 when fire destroyed two bridges.
In 2003, the line was leased to the Carrizo Gorge Railway and reopened in January 2005. That revival was short-lived due to expensive repairs needed to the line’s numerous bridges, and the line was embargoed in October 2008.
The railroad was leased in 2017 to Baja Rail, based in Tijuana and owned by Tijuana boxing promoter Fernando Beltran. It laid out a vision for rehabilitating the line, but with little progress, the company stopped making biannual lease payments of $500,000 to MTS last summer.
Sharon Cooney, CEO of MTS told the Union-Tribune she’s not giving up. “We still think the project has real potential,” Cooney said. She said it will likely take MTS a year or more to find a new leaseholder and is looking for funding to study the feasibility of rebuilding the line. “I do believe it’s an asset for the region, and if we have any opportunity to make the project work, we owe it to the public to try,” she told the Union-Tribune.
Does MTS realize that the line needs a total rebuild? Relining 17 tunnels and replacing 57 bridges would probably go a LONG way to making the line viable for an operator.
I hope they come up with something to get the line open again, I wish they would try to get those Stranded F Units out of Jacumba and possibly over to the Museum in Campo. It’s nice that their at least not giving up.
This is so not going to happen. As with anything else, use the money to make existing infrastructure more efficient. The SD&AE line is just another Raton Pass, Tennessee Pass, or Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension. Whenever there is a backlog with the current infrastructure, the speculation goes wild about reopening these routes that were shut down for inferior operational characteristics which still exist. Couple this with infrastructure money and the fantasies multiply. Let’s fix and/or improve what we have first before the only option is to use a vastly inferior route with a perpetually higher cost.
Indeed Mark. You just don’t wste capital to reopen lines for temporary demand..
Allow frack oil or coal export through your port. Then you will find capital to repair it. Oh, that is right, that doesn’t fit the climate narrative going down.
Also someone needs to go in and pull out those abandoned and vandalized former Metra bilevels in Antelope Canyon. Someone released the brake and it free rolled into the switch and derailed.
I give San Diego credit for trying, but unless they find someone to put some skin in the game by allowing unfettered access to the port, you just won’t have a lot of takers.
If they find nickel or cobalt in northern Mexico I could see a huge demand with the battery materials market exploding right now, but the only product found on the line is plaster.
17 Tunnels and 57 bridges? Hmm and you wonder why this line is not open? Probably be better off realigning the route elsewhere without all those bridges and tunnels…