09/22/07 - Tehachapi (Continued)

Weedpatch Highway

After watching a few at Sand Cut, we went down to the Weedpatch highway to get some gas. BNSF 604 followed us down toward Bakersfield with an ex-Conrail unit trailing. Note the silver on the 604 is now a dull grey. I like this look. The unit has a lot of character.  The 604 has seen better days but is still earning it’s keep on the main line. 

The weather was pretty variable this afternoon but the rain mostly held off during daylight. Heading downhill to Bakersfield, trains make 45 mph and I wasn’t able to get a good shot of the blue and white unit unfortunately.

Bena

With the northbound stacktrain entering Bakersfield and the minivan topped off, we made our way back uphill. The first stop was Bena, known best for the old decrepit processing plant next to the tracks and previously as the location of the helper spur.

A new addition at this location is the moveable frog turnout at the end of double track. This is an awesome piece of trackwork which utilizes a very high frog number(~#24). Normally such a high turnout number would result in a very long shallow frog with a delicate point which would not hold up to the beating that the parade of trains gives the track around here. The solution is a second single point in the frog that moves in conjunction with the main points. I’d like to see something like this in N Scale. Any takers?

As with just about all the places we went, a train was literally only minutes away. This time a BNSF manifest lead by BNSF 663, a Dash-8 repainted in to the Heritage II scheme. The train glided through the massive turnout like it was just another stretch of tangent with welded rail. All five units were leaning hard into the hill ahead.

Many of the BNSF trains we saw on our trip were led by two to four Dash-9’s or GEVO’s. It was really impressive to see the new big power in such abundance. A lot of trains also had an older second generation unit trailing at the back of the consist. I assume this was to manage horsepower-per-ton without having to add another Dash-9 and ending up with more horsepower than needed. Whatever the reason, the second generation units have all but disappeared, and there’s plenty of new GE power leading the tonnage.

Here’s a shot of the trailing SD40-2 as it flew by.

I’ve included a video of this train cresting the hill at Tehachapi at the end of this post.

Camera notes

In the past I’ve mostly shot video so it was a nice change to be able to watch the trains rather than be worrying about how the various clips would cut together. I wanted to make sure that I had a good collection of reference shots from this point in time knowing that all we were watching will change, and one day disappear for good. The Pentax Optio M40 compact 8-Megapixel camera I picked up for the trip (Costco $170, 2Gb SD card $25) ended up being just great for capturing all the shots I wanted, and it shot video as well.

I took lots of reference shots of cars like this, both clean and weathered. Once the trip posts are done, I’ll populate the galleries.

From Bena, we moved A little further up the line to the bridge at west Ilmon. There’s a lot of drainage ditch work going on here ahead of winter. Several grass fires have cleared a lot of ground cover near the line through to Caliente. The UP is likely expecting a lot more runoff as a result and are preparing the drainage routes to keep the line well protected.

It rained for an hour and nothing came by so we headed up the hill toward Bealeville, looking for trains.

Bealville

Approaching Bealeville, we saw a westbound stacker winding its way down through Cliff and we set up at Bealeville to watch it come by. Another well-worn Dash-8 was in the lead. This was somewhat unusual, as the majority of BNSF trains were sporting new GEVO’s on the point.

This train had a colorful consist including two nice blue and yellow and a cascade green SD40-2. Get’em while you still can!!

By far the most common type of train we encountered was the stack train. About 2/3 were stacks, loads going east and empties heading back to Asia for more cheap manufactured goods. If you want to see globalization in full flight, head to the Transcon.

Tunnels 14-17

Heading further up the mountain, we caught up with the BNSF 663 we caught at Bena draped around the hills near Tunnels 14-17. This is a really nice location but really only viewable from the freeway heading up hill or by hiking in. Since we didn’t have time to trek in, Marto snapped a few pics from the car as we passed by. I really like the way the train nestles into the hill here.

Here the head end has entered Tunnel 14. It will be another ten minutes before the train reaches our next spot on the western end of Tehachapi.

Tehachapi

With the ‘663 heading uphill we relocated to the road that dead-ends south of the line near the highway 202 overcrossing west of the town of Tehachapi. The road we are watching from is actually the old road across the line. We had time to pickup some coffee at the Starbucks located near the corner of Tehachapi Blvd and 202 before the trains arrived.

Before the ‘663 arrived we caught a westbound UP manifest.

Here’s a video the BNSF 663 making its run into the town of Tehachapi. I captured the video with the same little Pentax camera all the other pictures are taken with. I am very happy with the results given the small size and also that this is handheld shooting. Goodbye SLR and three-CCD video cameras!!!

Monolith

With just a little bit of daylight left, we caught one more westbound near the freeway overcrossing east of Monolith. A GEVO-lead stacktrain with loaded containers from China sliced through the damp evening air toward Tehachapi,the steel wheels of the well-cars sounding like ultrasharp knives being sharpened.

Marto and I put the camera away at this point and collected a pizza and drinks for dinner and made our way back to the grade crossing at Monolith for an hour or two of night time railroading. We saw several more, all BNSF before calling it a day.

Tomorrow we head out to the Mojave.