Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning

LAST EDITED ON Aug-16-04 AT 10:17 PM (EST)


Hey, let's head up the Grapevine and to Bakersfield for a day of railfaning on around Bakersfield. The date March 15th, 1953.The first train we see is First 804 prepairing to leave Bakersfield eastward. Diesels are sure taking hold as we note that only a few years ago 4200 class "malleys" took these trains over the Hill, now the steam is relegated to the Valley. We remind the fireman that the 6138 still has the train indicators set for its last westward train Extra 6138 West. Boy, they sure are keeping those diesels busy. The time is 10:53am...Next we'll head over to the SP enginehouse and see whats stiring...
Well the enginehouse is busling, six 4200 class "malleys" on the garden tracks waiting to help other trains over the Hill. AS616 numbers 5235 and 5265, 5337 and 5338 RSD5s, scads of F-units wait around the turntable, and look even two 4800 class FM Trainmasters! Wow, those sure are a long way from they're home in San Jose... The Cheif better get them back over Altamont Pass before tomorrow morning or he'll be explaining all the way to 65 Market St.Remind me to thank the Roundhouse Foreman for letting wonder around and letting us up on top of the 4212's tender to get those shots of the 4800's...Over at the Sant Fe's yard, most of the Santa Fe's helpers are GP7s, an RSD5, and two unit 100 and 400 class FTs assigned out of Bakersfield. Look at those sparkling clean 415LA FTs sitting on the open-air tracks. Amazingly the Santa Fe 3013 is under steam. Talking to the crew it turns out that the 2106 normally assigned to Arvin is in the shop today and they have to use a steam engine. That's great for us, but I don't think they are all that happy about it......(just a minute while I develope the next slide)....

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RE: Tehachapi 1953, NewEnglandRailFan, Aug-16-04, 09:53 PM, (1) RE: Tehachapi 1953, NS_B Line, Aug-16-04, 11:06 PM, (2) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, Erick_Cantu, Aug-16-04, 11:13 PM, (3) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 00:40 AM, (4) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 00:50 AM, (5) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 00:52 AM, (6) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 01:21 AM, (7) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, lucky1001, Aug-17-04, 02:57 AM, (8) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 04:27 AM, (9) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 04:33 AM, (10) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, Jonatan, Aug-17-04, 04:46 AM, (11) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, AtlanicPacificGarrett, Aug-17-04, 04:57 AM, (12) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, Jonatan, Aug-17-04, 05:41 AM, (13) RE: Tehachapi 1953 Railfanning, SVTS, Aug-17-04, 07:23 AM, (14)

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That is utterly beautiful -Dave

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I LOVE the look of handlaid track...very nice job.

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That's just bloody awesome."The F59PHI and Genesis are the lamest excuses for locomotives Amtrak has ever operated - accept it and move on. Hug an F40 before it's too late!"

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Here's the other roll of photos taken that day...Don't tell anyone, but the Roundhouse Foreman let us go up ontop of the watertower and take some pictures!This roll has some of the shots of ATSF 3013 and the ATSF engine house as well.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-17-04 AT 01:27 AM (EST)

Never mind about this one... Catch you at Bena...

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-17-04 AT 00:54 AM (EST)

OK let's Leave Bakersfield and head up the Edison Highway to Caliente and Beavlille......at Bena no trains... Wait! There's a train moving east! Just past the intermediate signal heading to Ilmon. Can we catch him? Don't think so. He's still moving at 50mph. That must be a passenger or express train. What! There aren't any scheduled!?!? Let's get to Caliente and catch whatever it is there......at Caliente, after a fierce and bumpy ride on the Cal-Bodfish Road... Nothing here yet, but I see something down in the "narrows" moving east. Let's go up on the hills to the north and catch some new angles......just after getting out of the car on the north side of the tracks... I see Him!!! He's still move above 30mph! There's no way we can get up the hill before he gets here. Best we can do is catch him after the horseshoe on the ruling grade... SP 6245 running as Second No.24 with a dozen Railway Express Agency reefers and a steel caboose. We finally get the camera setup and take the shot......After the Second No.24 passes we quickly decend the hill back to the car, and off we go to Bealville. Half way there up the Bealville Road...POP We quickly stop and pile out, just in time to see the last of the air bleeding from a gash in the right rear tire. Oh well, so much for catching the express at Bealville. Well the good news is that the Caliente Garage is still open......After a quick walk back to the Garage, the friendly "grease monkey" there says that it'll take about 20 minutes to tow our car down to the Garage and then about and hour to rerim a new tire. We are disapointed the we've missed the express but note that the San Joaquin Daylight is due in about an hour. If we wait, we can get some good shots of it. But the machanic overhears us... "You boys interested in trains? Well, you just missed a eastbound." "Yeah," we say thinking he means the Second No24 with SP6245. "Oh, no not that green one. I'm talk'in a drag, at least 50 or 60 cars, easy." "When did he go by?" "Oh, 'bout 10 or 15 minutes ago. Course there's no way he'll get away from the express." After some quick calcualtions in our head we figure that the "drag" will get pasted at Allard and we may still catch him at Bealville yet.
So now we're going to get our exercise walking to Bealville. After a short walk up the steep hill to Bealville. We get there in time to shoot the SP 6135 working its way east. Then after some shots of the section gage's buildings and Forman's house and catching the SP 5301 on the point of No.52, the eastward San Joaquin Daylight. We head back to Caliente. Checking in at the garage it'll be another 20 minutes. Time to buy something to eat and drink at the Caliente Store. As we poke around Caliente we notice a PRR gondola set out in the short siding... Then see how old some of the outfit cars are in town. Man look at SPMW 76... That think must be a hundred years old!

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-17-04 AT 01:28 AM (EST)

Now back to 2004, SD-90MACs, and Dash9s. I think I was born about 50 years too late. The photos were taken on the Tehachapi Pass Exibit of the La Mesa Model Railroad Club in Balboa Park, San Diego, California. Open to the Public Tuesday-Friday 11am-4pm and Weekends 11am-5pm.
The equipment photograped is privately owned but shows up for the quarterly Prototypical 1950s Timetable & Trainorder Operating Sessions. Most of the photos were taken in the last few days and during the August 15th Session, with others being staged after hours. The club also has a fully functional CTC machine to control the layout and signals.

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WOW...just WOW!!!
If you want to travel plain take a plane, If you want to travel in fame take a train!

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-17-04 AT 05:20 AM (EST)

I should mention that the layout was the feature artical in the January 2004 Model Railroader, complete with a three-leaf fold-out track plan showing the plans of the completed layout. Currently the SP Valley staging yard is in service west of the SP yard at Bakersfield. The double track main between Kern Junction and Edison is complete in cluding the branchlines to Taft via Sunset Railway and Arvin via DiGiorgio. From Edison there is a shoo-fly to just west of Ilmon. From Ilmon the railroad is in service to Tunnel 8, between Cliff and Rowen. The Santa Fe yard and SF "Valley" yard is not complete, but plans are being worked on to put them in "soon." The present operating bottleneck is the SP's Bakersfield yard. It is not designed to take the full load of trains of both the SP and the Santa Fe, even with a capacity of over 600 cars. The SP yard with only a East End switching crew capable of doing the heavy classification and a West End crew helping to cut in the many helpers required by 56-64 car trains strugling againse the 2.2% ruling grade out of Ilmon. The ATSF yard will allow at least one yard to stay in action even when the other gets jammed up... Hopefully, that is. Current plans call for the Loop at Walong to be in service in about 10 months, in time for major modeling and historical conventions in San Diego in the Summer of 2005. The layout when complete will take 3 hours to run one complete cycle from Mojave to Bakersfield and back. Concervitive tonnage calculations are used of 2 cars per powered axle. Some model engines can not handle an hour of constant load of dragging a train up a 2.0% grade. The motors start to over heat and that over heats the DCC chips used to control the engines. Yes, even the models do have a sort of "Contineous Tractive Effort" rating. During the last Operation Session, August 15th, 1953 (2004), there were over 30 train movements. These included 8 first class passenger trains, 2 second class trains, 4 third class trains and over 16 extras not counting the trains run into the San Joaquin Valley west of Bakersfield. Aproxamently 35 train orders governing train meets were issued to three telegraph operators and delivered to train crews. The layout is run without a fast clock or situation cards, for example mechanical falures do not need to be simulated. In the last session No.58, the Eastward OWL, stalled at Bealville. resulting in a delay of 30 minutes, using the work train's engine 5301 as the now point helper and setting out the road engine, a AC-10 class malley, with a slipping driveshaft. Good thing one of the heads of the Operation Dept. came by to supervise the moves and coordinate with the Dispatcher. Real falures in a basicly sound system leads to interesting operation, and create real challenges to over come, usually at the worse times, of course!

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-17-04 AT 04:44 AM (EST)

A photo taken of the CTC machine in service about two weeks after being put into operation. Operated this day by Mountain Dispatcher, J.R.Hill. Photo by D.F.Willoughby, photo used by permission.Notice occupancy of blocks and trains meeting at Ilmon and Allard.

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Wonder how many millions of $$$ they've spent on that? Looks frikkin awesome!! I'd die of a stroke getting to be that close to such a Godly layout./JonatanSteam rules!

Train gifs from Dans Railroad Gif RoundhouseNever trust computers. If you do, they will betray you.I'm the steam freak, ph34r me!!

My E-mail jonatan.gronoset@telia.com

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About $250000 on the public access to the upper level alone. That took 12 years to raise. $5000 to $15000 for most other construction "phases." All raise by club members and through benfactors issuing matching donation challenges to the club. Club members also pay a additional amount of $10/month in dues that goes toward construction.

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I'd love to visit but I'm just 18 and my budget wouldn't cut the expences for airline tickets and hotels.I'll try not to have a stroke. /JonatanSteam rules!

Train gifs from Dans Railroad Gif RoundhouseNever trust computers. If you do, they will betray you.I'm the steam freak, ph34r me!!

My E-mail jonatan.gronoset@telia.com

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I was lucky enough to visit the display, as well as the others housed there, last summer. It truly is worth the trip. There are if I am not mistaken, about 5 or 6 larger operating layouts of different scales, but being a fan of Tehachapi to begin with, I found that layout to be most impressive, even if it is only completed thus far to Rowan, some 8 miles shy of the loop.Chris Bogley
Syracuse New Yorkwww.msnusers.com/cnytrains
www.msnusers.com/ashleyphotography

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