cajon-pass-extrahttps://www.trains.com/trn/railroads/cajon-pass-extra/Cajon Pass Extra | Trains MagazineA behind the scenes look at Cajon Pass to accompany the February 2014 issueInStockUSD1.001.00railroadsarticleTRN2020-11-032013-12-2718495
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A behind the scenes look at Cajon Pass to accompany the February 2014 issue
In October 2013, Trains sent me to Southern California to attend the first-ever Association of Tourist Railroads and Railway Museums meeting, to see Union Pacific’s preparatory work for moving Big Boy 4-8-8-4 No. 4014 AND to get material for the February 2014 article in the magazine: “Cajon Pass Unplugged.”
I spent weeks before and after the visit looking through photographs, old maps, and newer maps, in an attempt to figure out how I could cover Cajon differently but in a way that at least respected the history of the area and the legion of outstanding photographers who have come before me.
In the end, there was a job to get done; a story to illustrate. So in the quick gallery below you’ll see off-hand behind-the-scenes shots. They’re not even close to the quality work in similar locations by Richard Steinheimer, Chard Walker, and Stan Kistler. But these photos are an example of what I saw when I was there and hopefully what you might see if you are ever as fortunate as I was to visit Cajon Pass in autumn.
A loaded BNSF Railway container train – a double stack – trecks steadily west towards Summit and Los Angeles. This is the farthest east I traveled in four days of visiting Cajon Pass. This is where it looked and felt like a desert. Little did I know that this spot at milepost 53 is only the welcome mat for the Mojave Desert.
Old U.S. Route 66 parallels BNSF Railway’s and Union Pacific’s tracks through a hefty portion of Cajon Pass, particularly through the Blue Cut area headed east to Keenbrook, Calif. We stopped at a stone retaining wall in Blue Cut that looked like it was Depression-era vintage and started shooting. In Cajon Pass, as everyone has told me, the trains are constant and nearly always in motion.
Track clips are the somewhat spring-like metal fasteners that hold rails to concrete ties. With several track upgrades and improvements along BNSF Railway portion of Cajon Pass, different styles and manufacture of clips have come and gone; one displacing another in new construction as standards and technology change.
These are OK steps if you want to climb in and around gullies and through culverts built into the road bed in Cajon Pass. But these were really designed for animals of the San Bernardino National Forest to use to more easily navigate around the busy railroads. Anywhere that wildlife experts believed that animals would benefit from steps, a watering hole, or other kind of accommodation, BNSF Railway worked it out. Without the extra effort, civil engineers say the BNSF triple tracking project might have taken years longer to complete.
In order to get the best early morning shots for the February issue of Trains Magazine, BNSF Railway escorted me through the cut just west of Summit to get to Summit itself. The time for this adventure: too early.
A million cubic yards of dirt is a lot to move. So when BNSF Railway civil engineers say that removing two tunnels along Cajon Pass went to fill in holes left by the building nearby Interstate 15, I asked, “Where?” Well, this is the spot: a little east of Mormon Rocks, but not really anywhere, really. That must have been a big hole.
