When Team Whooz first learned of the Pacific Railroad Society's Diamond Jubilee Special excursion it sounded like a great ride: Mostly Amtrak consist over the rare passenger mileage of Cajon Pass (UP's Palmdale Cutoff, not the BNSF transcon used daily by the Southwest Chief), across the desert on said cutoff, Tehachapi Pass to Bakersfield, and return. Then we saw the price, $329 apiece for Coach, hotel at Bakersfield not included, and more for premium dome seating and meal service, hotel at Bakersfield still not included.
It was quickly decided that the Pacific Railroad Society's Diamond Jubilee Special excursion sounded like a great railfanning opportunity, which would only cost time, fuel, food we'd mostly take along, and a couple nights in cheap hotels. In other words around $200.
We loaded up and piled into the MayhemMobile (a new one this year) on April Fool's Day to commence what was probably the most well-prepared trackside trip in Team Whooz history. Never having done Cajon Pass before, except for a cursory once through on the way back from somewhere else, I researched that expanse of real estate forward, backward, up, down, and sideways.
And it all turned out to be pretty much for nothing.
As we found, the vast majority of Cajon railfanning guidance available online assumes one's willingness to trespass on railroad and other private property, a practice staunchly opposed and never pursued by Team Whooz. So recalling the earlier once through actually proved quite valuable, as it had been done legally from public roads and other locations. Besides, it also became clear that the online advice would take us out of the pass and into the desert in a way that was wrong for where we wanted to be positioned for railfanning the excursion train on April 2.
This is not to say that we got April Fooled, or that the day was a waste. On the way to learning where we didn't wanna go and didn't wanna be a number of BNSF and UP freight trains were encountered and photographed, some from chunks of old Route 66 that still wind through the pass adjacent to I-15, and some from Summit Valley Rd., which runs with the BNSF line (but not the Palmdale Cutoff) into the desert at Hesperia.
We finished with the pass early enough to head into the desert along the cutoff, and caught a little freight action out there before doubling back and spending the night at Hesperia.
Photos (comprehensively captioned, as usual):
Cajon Pass & Palmdale Cutoff
One thing we had learned for certain was that it would be pointless to try to catch the excursion train over Cajon, then race to try and catch it over the Tehachapis as well. The distance is not too great, but there are few route choices, all bad. Trying to do Cajon during the train's run to Bakersfield would forfeit catching it in the Tehachapis. During Friday's short drive into the desert we found a place that would make a decent compromise, and on Saturday morning we headed to a grade crossing just beyond the Phelan siding on the Palmdale Cutoff outside Hesperia.
Parked at the crossing, setting up to catch the excursion train as it passed, there was the gnawing fear that we mighta missed it somehow. Maybe we shoulda left the hotel earlier. Maybe we shoulda refueled the night before. How long would it really take to get over the pass? Then the scanner started crackling, and it seemed like we were okay, but we didn't really know for sure until the headlight came into view. One good thing about our spot was that we could see for miles up the line, so I was able to take a pretty sweet still shot before hunkering down to catch video of the fast pass.
Video:
PRS Special At Speed
Then it was quickly back into the MayhemMobile, retracing our path down a dinky backroad and turning onto the main "highway" toward Palmdale. Did I mention that all the desert routes are bad? Track speeds on the Palmdale Cutoff are 60 and 70. We were doing a little better than 55 - sometimes - on the two-lane Pearblossom Highway. For a time we thought the train's 35 mph limit through Mojave would give us a brief advantage in catching up, but any thought of that evaporated as we dragged through city traffic and uncoordinated stoplights in Palmdale on the way to highway 14. Once on 14 we were able to pick up the pace through Lancaster, past Rosamond and Edwards AFB, then on to Mojave. Just after Mojave we picked up highway 58 east over the Tehachapis to Bakersfield.
After the discouraging slog through the desert and the stop-and-go morass through Palmdale we were pretty sure we wouldn't see the excursion train again 'til we caught up with it sitting next to the Amtrak station at Bakersfield.
Now Team Whooz tried to railfan Tehachapi Pass one weekend in January. Like Cajon, it had turned out that much of the online guidance was predicated on willingness to engage in various forms of trespassing. Also like Cajon, Team Whooz refused to operate that way, believing that if one is willing to put a little work into it successful railfanning can be well accomplished by legal means. Anyway, the weather was rotten over the Tehachapis that weekend in January, and the rail line was mostly shut down, so the adventure was largely for naught (except for finding a good cheap hotel in Bakersfield).
This time the weather was fine in the mountains (it had sucked in the desert - cold, biting wind, sand in the face), but it looked like the adventure was gonna be for naught again cuz we were running so far behind.
Then we caught the train.
There it was, running on a ledge between two short tunnels across a ravine from the highway. Eureka!!
It looked great snaking along the mountainside, the consist pretty much as expected, if not quite in the order I would have arranged it (picky picky), and best of all the train was moving really s-l-o-w-l-y. This meant plenty of time to get to a preferred photo spot discovered in January. Hey, that adventure was LARGELY for naught, not entirely!
The PRS Special was not far east of the town of Tehachapi, running short of the famed loop at Walong, short of Keene, and WELL short of the tiny settlement of Caliente, where I wanted to catch it.
As we left the train behind and kept driving toward the turnoff to Caliente we saw two freight trains, both of which appeared to be headed toward Bakersfield, as were we. But you have to be careful here, because the rail line is so winding and convoluted that unless you know it very well in relation to highway 58 it's easy to be fooled. Indeed, it turned out that both these freights were in fact headed toward L.A., though when we spotted them they seemed to be going our way.
Reaching Caliente after turning off highway 58 and driving downhill for a couple miles into a narrow valley, Team Whooz Executive Assistant Alice dropped me off at the spot I requested, then drove on to a vantage point she had chosen - both locations discovered in January.
After a short climb got me an overview of the Caliente area it was then a matter of jockeying around for a favorite angle, taking a few test shots, then settling in for a wait. While waiting I developed a theory of how the place got named. Caliente is Spanish for hot, and it was. It hadn't been hot up on highway 58, but down in the valley, several hundred feet lower and sheltered from any breezes, it was sweltering. I imagined that some Mexican railroad workers who helped build the line in the 19th century complained about the heat - "Ay dios mio, muy caliente!" - and since nobody would use those other words to name a place, Caliente stuck. Or not. Strange transient thoughts while trying to hear an approaching train I wouldn't be able to see at first, and cursing passing cars for their noise that might mask locomotive sounds.
Also a lot of bees around, and as I occasionally dodged them and batted them away I began wondering if I might be rousing a hive of Africanized "killer" bees that would chase me down and sting me to death before I could get a good shot of the train.
Railfanning can be a strange pursuit.
Finally I heard a horn that I knew to be from a nearby grade crossing. Shortly thereafter a bunch of cars and pickup trucks started arriving in the area - railfans coming from the grade crossing - and I knew it wouldn't be much longer before the excursion train appeared.
Video:
PRS Special Descends At Caliente
After the train passed there was a mixup between me and the Executive Assistant that cost us some time in getting started out of the mountains and into Bakersfield, so no more photography 'til we found the train again at the Amtrak station - BFD - which to me looks like some modernist suburban church from the 1960s. A few shots around the station, then we checked into the cheap hotel located in January. We had been told that the entire consist would be turned on a wye the next morning before departure back to L.A., so after settling in at the hotel and uploading the day's pics and vids we went back to the station for some sundown shots, then set out to locate the wye. No go on finding the wye in the dark, so we refueled for the next day and called it a night.
Photos:
PRS Special: Desert, Tehachapis, Bakersfield
NEXT: Wye Found and Return
It was quickly decided that the Pacific Railroad Society's Diamond Jubilee Special excursion sounded like a great railfanning opportunity, which would only cost time, fuel, food we'd mostly take along, and a couple nights in cheap hotels. In other words around $200.
We loaded up and piled into the MayhemMobile (a new one this year) on April Fool's Day to commence what was probably the most well-prepared trackside trip in Team Whooz history. Never having done Cajon Pass before, except for a cursory once through on the way back from somewhere else, I researched that expanse of real estate forward, backward, up, down, and sideways.
And it all turned out to be pretty much for nothing.
As we found, the vast majority of Cajon railfanning guidance available online assumes one's willingness to trespass on railroad and other private property, a practice staunchly opposed and never pursued by Team Whooz. So recalling the earlier once through actually proved quite valuable, as it had been done legally from public roads and other locations. Besides, it also became clear that the online advice would take us out of the pass and into the desert in a way that was wrong for where we wanted to be positioned for railfanning the excursion train on April 2.
This is not to say that we got April Fooled, or that the day was a waste. On the way to learning where we didn't wanna go and didn't wanna be a number of BNSF and UP freight trains were encountered and photographed, some from chunks of old Route 66 that still wind through the pass adjacent to I-15, and some from Summit Valley Rd., which runs with the BNSF line (but not the Palmdale Cutoff) into the desert at Hesperia.
We finished with the pass early enough to head into the desert along the cutoff, and caught a little freight action out there before doubling back and spending the night at Hesperia.
Photos (comprehensively captioned, as usual):
Cajon Pass & Palmdale Cutoff
One thing we had learned for certain was that it would be pointless to try to catch the excursion train over Cajon, then race to try and catch it over the Tehachapis as well. The distance is not too great, but there are few route choices, all bad. Trying to do Cajon during the train's run to Bakersfield would forfeit catching it in the Tehachapis. During Friday's short drive into the desert we found a place that would make a decent compromise, and on Saturday morning we headed to a grade crossing just beyond the Phelan siding on the Palmdale Cutoff outside Hesperia.
Parked at the crossing, setting up to catch the excursion train as it passed, there was the gnawing fear that we mighta missed it somehow. Maybe we shoulda left the hotel earlier. Maybe we shoulda refueled the night before. How long would it really take to get over the pass? Then the scanner started crackling, and it seemed like we were okay, but we didn't really know for sure until the headlight came into view. One good thing about our spot was that we could see for miles up the line, so I was able to take a pretty sweet still shot before hunkering down to catch video of the fast pass.
Video:
PRS Special At Speed
Then it was quickly back into the MayhemMobile, retracing our path down a dinky backroad and turning onto the main "highway" toward Palmdale. Did I mention that all the desert routes are bad? Track speeds on the Palmdale Cutoff are 60 and 70. We were doing a little better than 55 - sometimes - on the two-lane Pearblossom Highway. For a time we thought the train's 35 mph limit through Mojave would give us a brief advantage in catching up, but any thought of that evaporated as we dragged through city traffic and uncoordinated stoplights in Palmdale on the way to highway 14. Once on 14 we were able to pick up the pace through Lancaster, past Rosamond and Edwards AFB, then on to Mojave. Just after Mojave we picked up highway 58 east over the Tehachapis to Bakersfield.
After the discouraging slog through the desert and the stop-and-go morass through Palmdale we were pretty sure we wouldn't see the excursion train again 'til we caught up with it sitting next to the Amtrak station at Bakersfield.
Now Team Whooz tried to railfan Tehachapi Pass one weekend in January. Like Cajon, it had turned out that much of the online guidance was predicated on willingness to engage in various forms of trespassing. Also like Cajon, Team Whooz refused to operate that way, believing that if one is willing to put a little work into it successful railfanning can be well accomplished by legal means. Anyway, the weather was rotten over the Tehachapis that weekend in January, and the rail line was mostly shut down, so the adventure was largely for naught (except for finding a good cheap hotel in Bakersfield).
This time the weather was fine in the mountains (it had sucked in the desert - cold, biting wind, sand in the face), but it looked like the adventure was gonna be for naught again cuz we were running so far behind.
Then we caught the train.
There it was, running on a ledge between two short tunnels across a ravine from the highway. Eureka!!
It looked great snaking along the mountainside, the consist pretty much as expected, if not quite in the order I would have arranged it (picky picky), and best of all the train was moving really s-l-o-w-l-y. This meant plenty of time to get to a preferred photo spot discovered in January. Hey, that adventure was LARGELY for naught, not entirely!
The PRS Special was not far east of the town of Tehachapi, running short of the famed loop at Walong, short of Keene, and WELL short of the tiny settlement of Caliente, where I wanted to catch it.
As we left the train behind and kept driving toward the turnoff to Caliente we saw two freight trains, both of which appeared to be headed toward Bakersfield, as were we. But you have to be careful here, because the rail line is so winding and convoluted that unless you know it very well in relation to highway 58 it's easy to be fooled. Indeed, it turned out that both these freights were in fact headed toward L.A., though when we spotted them they seemed to be going our way.
Reaching Caliente after turning off highway 58 and driving downhill for a couple miles into a narrow valley, Team Whooz Executive Assistant Alice dropped me off at the spot I requested, then drove on to a vantage point she had chosen - both locations discovered in January.
After a short climb got me an overview of the Caliente area it was then a matter of jockeying around for a favorite angle, taking a few test shots, then settling in for a wait. While waiting I developed a theory of how the place got named. Caliente is Spanish for hot, and it was. It hadn't been hot up on highway 58, but down in the valley, several hundred feet lower and sheltered from any breezes, it was sweltering. I imagined that some Mexican railroad workers who helped build the line in the 19th century complained about the heat - "Ay dios mio, muy caliente!" - and since nobody would use those other words to name a place, Caliente stuck. Or not. Strange transient thoughts while trying to hear an approaching train I wouldn't be able to see at first, and cursing passing cars for their noise that might mask locomotive sounds.
Also a lot of bees around, and as I occasionally dodged them and batted them away I began wondering if I might be rousing a hive of Africanized "killer" bees that would chase me down and sting me to death before I could get a good shot of the train.
Railfanning can be a strange pursuit.
Finally I heard a horn that I knew to be from a nearby grade crossing. Shortly thereafter a bunch of cars and pickup trucks started arriving in the area - railfans coming from the grade crossing - and I knew it wouldn't be much longer before the excursion train appeared.
Video:
PRS Special Descends At Caliente
After the train passed there was a mixup between me and the Executive Assistant that cost us some time in getting started out of the mountains and into Bakersfield, so no more photography 'til we found the train again at the Amtrak station - BFD - which to me looks like some modernist suburban church from the 1960s. A few shots around the station, then we checked into the cheap hotel located in January. We had been told that the entire consist would be turned on a wye the next morning before departure back to L.A., so after settling in at the hotel and uploading the day's pics and vids we went back to the station for some sundown shots, then set out to locate the wye. No go on finding the wye in the dark, so we refueled for the next day and called it a night.
Photos:
PRS Special: Desert, Tehachapis, Bakersfield
NEXT: Wye Found and Return
As Usual Team Whooz has made us Envious, great Pics and Report! Glad to see that Alice is still keeping Patrick under Control so he's not confused with the Characters that hang out in the Rail Stations in California! :lol: :lol: :lol:
