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SECTION I
THE YUMA DISTRICT: AN INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Yuma District
The Southern Pacific Lines, comprised of the rails of
the Southern Pacific Transportation and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Companies,
join 15 states with over 15,000 route-miles of railroad, the largest
percentage of which lies in the Golden State of California. The Los Angeles
and West Colton Divisions contain 10 percent or 1500 miles of those
routes, spanning from the Arizona border
to the central California
coast.
The Yuma District is one of five in the West Colton
Division; it extends from West Colton,
California to Yuma,
Arizona. The Yuma Line is the major artery under
the control of the District, with the San Bernardino
and Riverside branches serving the Inland
Empire area while the Calexico, Sandia, El Centro
and Yuma Valley Railroad branches support the transportation needs of
the Imperial and Yuma Valleys
in Arizona and southeastern California.
In the past, the Yuma District has been called the Yuma
Subdivision; the SP seems to change the appellation back and forth over
time.
The Reason for a Guidebook
What is the purpose of this guidebook? It's to assist the SP rail enthusiast,
the railroad modeler, perhaps even the occasional SP employee to have
a better sense of feel for the Yuma District and the country through
which the railroad passes. It's
for the armchair railfan, for the folks who would rather not fight the
traffic, the desert, the heat.
It's for the railroaders who for whatever reason can't get to
the Yuma District, whether because of distance, money, health, or bad
tires.
This guidebook attempts to provide an general overview
of the railroad as it existed in 1990. I tried to pay attention to detail so that,
as I said before, if you're not able to get out and about the Yuma District,
that by reading this you'll still get a good feel for the railroad and
its physical plant.
Guidebook Format
The guidelines that are set forth in the following paragraphs
are exactly that; these are the rules of observation and reporting that
I attempt to follow while researching the
railroad. They
will also help to explain features of the book and the methods for measurement
and recording.
What To Include in a Guidebook
A difficult problem was what to make note of and what
to ignore. I hope that I
have recalled all the pertinent details and left out most of the chaff. In areas where there is a dense population
of railroad features (signals, switches, bridges, grade crossings) this
isn't a problem. There is
always something to write about and there are plenty of landmarks and
points of interest for the reader.
But in the stretches of spare country, like between GLAMIS (MP698.1)
and CACTUS (MP712.3), there are few landmarks to go by and so I will
pay a bit more attention to minor drainages, power lines and dirt roads.
Data Collection Techniques
Like many of you, I have spent weekends cruising the
Tehachapi Loop, checking out the Lone Pine Branch (Trona Line), waiting
atop the Pepper Street Bridge at the east end of the Departure Yard
at West Colton, watching the action or the lack thereof.
I noticed that many others seemed to do the same thing, and that
everyone had their own secrets to successful railfanning.
I found no source of information that really described
the railroad at the detail that I desired, especially out in the forbidding
reaches of the Yuma Line. So
I began to write down everything that I saw or heard, whether from railfans
or railroaders. I used a
microcassette recorder to capture on tape many bits of information that
were too fleeting to stop the car and write down.
In all, compilation of this Guide has cost at least
several hundred hours of time in the field, a few dollars in repairs
to my car, and probably a failed relationship or two in my personal
life.
Explanation Of Descriptions
Being of moderately well-ordered mind, it seems apparent
that a sensible method of constructing a Guide is to write one that
uses the nearly ubiquitous Milepost as the index. So this Guide starts at the lowest Milepost
on a route, and proceeds upward.
By definition, this is always eastbound, although it's sometimes
less than apparent that the rails are going anywhere near eastbound.
Location names are printed in CAPITAL letters for three
reasons. The first reason
is that it may be a station or siding and so is called out in the Southern
Pacific Western Region Timetable dated October 1987. Second, it may also signify a name of a
specific place referred to by either train crews or by the dispatcher. An example of the first instance is "the
west switch of North GARNET Siding"; Garnet siding is described
in the Timetable. Of course,
the third reason is that the reader can see it that much more easily
during a quick scan of the manual.
A fine example of the second occurrence is the BLYTHE
CROSSING (MP612.9); this is actually where Dillon Road crosses the railroad tracks
at the southeast end of Indio. Although not called out in the Timetable,
SP crews near the Dillon Road grade crossing will sometimes call out
this name where asked for a location by other crews working in the same
area. Why? Because along Highway 86, parallel to the
railroad, there is a highway sign indicating to automobile drivers and
also visible to the train crews, that the town of Blythe is "thataway"
down Dillon Road.
Almost all switches not directly coupled into the main
track will have a number stenciled on their target. This number refers to the spur that the
switch controls and not to the switch itself. Examples of this are the interchange tracks
at Niland: The same numbers are on the switch targets at either end
of the track (tracks 0592, 0593 or 0594).
So technically the switch labeled 0594 at around MP666.9 would
be described as "the switch (or turnout) at the west end of 594". But in some cases the spur is single-ended,
and therefore there is only one switch target with that number, as exists
at the equipment spur 1145 near the west end of Glamis siding. The point is that although the number is
specific only to the spur track I will use that number to refer to either
the switch or the spur; the text description will (hopefully) clarify
the reference.
Routes
The Yuma District consists of the Yuma Line and six
branch lines that act as feeders.
The Yuma Line is the primary portion of track in the District,
and certainly the most important freight route and through route for
the traffic coming from the west coast and headed to the southeast and
east; depending on season, the southern route can be safer, faster and
more reliable than the central route through Nevada,
Utah and into Colorado.
The guidebook stresses operations on the Yuma Line,
with auxiliary chapters on the various branch lines within the District.
Mileposts
The guidebook is organized by milepost: the guide begins
with the lowest milepost number and, in the case of the SP, travels
eastbound. I have made numerous
trips along the right-of-ways in both directions, and I debated at some
length as to how I could construct a book that could be read either
east to west or west to east. I
looked at other types of guides that I have seen in the past; I could
see no simple way to present a bi-directional trip log.
If you intend to travel the route east to west, then you'll have
to read backwards, just like me.
Mileposts along the SP are almost always marked with
a milepost sign. Sometimes
a trackside signal line pole doubles as the post, but often there is
a special pole devoted to milepost duty, sitting all alone, perhaps
even on the opposite side of the tracks from the signal line poles. In a few instances, the milepost sign (the
number board) is missing, but on these occasions you can usually recognize
the post since the lower half of the post itself is painted white. If the whole post is missing, you'll have
to rely upon your odometer or upon the "count the poles" method.
The signal line poles along the right-of-way support
power, control and signal wires that carry the commands that the dispatcher
issues to operate the railroad.
There are, on average, about thirty-three poles per mile. Depending on the soil type, weather conditions
and such there may be more or less; the minimum number I have counted
between mileposts is twenty-five and the maximum nearly forty.
While wandering around along the right-of-way, I will
often use these poles to estimate my position with respect to the mileposts.
For instance, if the number of poles per mile has been averaging
30, the distance covered by three poles is about 0.1 mile.
This comes in handy when you find that your odometer is inaccurate
or there are few culverts or bridges with stenciled markings indicating
their locations.
I could have used pole count for the distances as described
in this book: for instance, the bridge at MP673.7 I could have described
as MP673+27, where 27 is the number of poles east of the 673 milepost
marker. Although it might
have been of some added ease for a few people, I realized that the majority
would prefer the locations given in actual miles, so that most could
consult maps without necessarily having to have been there.
However, some of the distances I measured in making up this guide
are based upon pole count.
Measurement Accuracy
The accuracy of my measurements is about 0.1 mile; therefore
I do not display more precision than that. I always round down to the previous 0.1
mile. The bridge that crosses
the American Girl Wash has the location 715.78 stenciled upon the abutment;
I will include this bridge in the list of items for the milepost 715.7.
Often there are multiple items of interest in a given
tenth mile; generally the guide book will always list the features in
order of location. However,
the most predominate railroad features in that tenth mile will always
get top billing over any other observations, with the following text
clarifying the order of appearance.
An example is the following listing from Milepost 576.5:
576.5 MONS
Crossovers
East Switch Mons
Siding
West Switch Fingal Siding
EB/WB Absolute
Signal Towers
Colorado River Aqueduct Crossing
Fingal Siding Length 11373'
The most important structure is the Mons Crossover itself,
followed closely by the fact that this location is the east end of the
Mons Siding and the west end of the Fingal Siding; there are signal
bridges at either end of the crossover.
Lastly, the Colorado River Aqueduct that supplies the majority
of water to Southern California passes under the tracks just a few dozen
feet west of the west end of the Crossover.
Also note that there are a few irregularities concerning
the mileposts: the tracks cross Mammoth Wash on a 200' bridge with the
marked location of 679.98; however, the 680 milepost is immediately
west of the bridge. Therefore
sometimes the mile markers aren't exactly where they should be. Often it will seem that the distance between
mileposts is not exactly 1.00 miles. It rarely is.
Mysterious Alphanumerics
OK. So you
read that MP552.7 is the site of the EL CASCO Station. Then immediately after that entry, the
mysterious "RIV9BB6" appears.
What's that, you ask?
I had to standardize on some set of maps for the reader
to begin with. The United
States Geological Survey topographical maps (topos) are a wonderful
trove of invaluable mapping information, but aren't generally much good
as day-to-day highway maps. Since
the Automobile Club of Southern California is not in the habit of distributing
their fine maps to the general public, the next best are the publications
of the Thomas Bros. Map Company and the DeLorme Company.
Both companies provide a set of mapbooks that cover
all of California
in varying levels of detail. "RIV"
refers to the Thomas
Bros. Riverside
County mapbook;
"9B" is the mapbook page, "B6" are the x-y coordinates
on that mapbook page. The
combination of the Thomas Bros. "Riverside & San Bernardino
Counties Street Guide and Directory" can get you in reasonable
detail all the way to about Ferrum Station at MP639.
From there, the "Southern California Atlas and Gazetteer"
published by DeLorme provides reduced resolution and detail all the
way to the Colorado River and Yuma
and to well beyond MP740.
Errors, Corrections and Plain Untruths
Most all of the field observations taken for this Guidebook
were made between March 1989 and May 1991. I have strived to report accurately all
the information in this Guide and have attempted to keep the errors
to a minimum since there is little advantage to me to fabricate untruths. I have no affiliation with the Southern
Pacific, except as an interested observer and have no secret hot line
to the people in the know. In
fact, as was mentioned in the book The Southern Pacific, 1901 - 1985
and from personal communications with SP employees, much of the history
of the company is lost to the company.
What remains rests outside the company and in the minds of the
employees and retirees of the railroad.
Since the Southern Pacific is a living, dynamic entity,
there will be regular changes and modifications to its equipment and
physical plant, and what is in evidence one day may be nothing more
than a bit of subroadbed or a few scattered ties a month later. I therefore cannot guarantee anything more
than that I have made an honest attempt at reporting.
I welcome any information from readers that helps to
clear misunderstandings that I might have inadvertently caused. I also hope that those with additional
information about the railroad's history in this region will come forth
so that it may be included in any future editions (Hope Springs Eternal)
of this Guide. In fact,
I hope that there will be subsequent editions that cover other portions
of the Southern Pacific Lines, the Santa
Fe and other interesting railroads.
Reference Materials Used for this Guide
There is obviously no one book that has provided me
with the information that this book contains. (If there was, I would have bought it instead
of writing this). Of course
much of what is detailed here is through field work: personal reconnaissance,
talking with railroad employees, camping out along the route and watching
the traffic. Books about
railroading, California history, general
history, geology and geography, and newspaper articles pulled off microfilm
from a storage vault provide more input and breadth. The last and equally important are the
maps: old maps from a variety of sources printed over the last hundred
and fifty years, United States Geological Survey (USGS) Topographic
(Topo) maps, Defense Mapping Agency Maps, maps published by the Automobile
Club of Southern California, Thomas Bros. maps, freebie maps given out
by developers and museums, etc.
All maps that I had available to me have provided some input,
directly or indirectly, to the formation of this Guide.
The following is a partial list indicating the major
references used. The list
is not exhaustive, and I'm sure that there are many references that
I never saw that might provide me with a clearer picture.
Publications
"Western Region Timetable 2", Southern
Pacific Transportation Company, October 25, 1987
"Western Region Timetable 3", Southern
Pacific Transportation Company, October 29, 1989
"All About Signals", John Armstrong,
Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1957
"Trackwork Handbook", Paul Mallery,
Boynton and Assoc., 1977
"The History of The Southern Pacific",
Bill Yeane, Bison Books, 1985
"The Southern Pacific, 1901 - 1985",
Don L. Hofsommer,
Texas A&M Press, 1986
"Southern Pacific Country", Donald
Sims, Trans-Anglo Books, 1987
"Santa
Fe' Route To the Pacific.", Philip
C. Serpico, Omni Publications, 1988
"San Diego
and Arizona
Eastern", Robert Hanft, Trans-Anglo Books, 1984
"City-Makers", Remi Nadeau, Trans-Anglo
Books, 1955
Trains Magazine, CTC Board, Pacific Rail News, Various Issues
"Flimsies! The Newsmagazine of Western Railroading",
many issues
"The History of California", H. H. Bancroft, 1883,
Vol 1-7
"The Compendium of Signals", R. F.
Karl, The Builder's Compendium, Celeron,
NY, 1971
"The Southern California
Guide to Railroad Communications", James Ciardi, 1987
"Railroads of Arizona, Vol. 1", D. Myrick, Trans-Anglo, 1975
Unpublished List of Railroad Frequencies, Greg Ramsey
/ Brian Hunell, 1990
Mapbooks
and Maps
"Early California
Atlas - Southern Edition", R. N. Preston, Binford & Mort
Publishing, 1988
"San Bernardino & Riverside Counties Street
Guide & Directory", Thomas Bros. Maps, 1987
"California
- Road Atlas and Driver's Guide", Thomas Bros. Maps, 1988
"Southern California
Atlas and Gazetteer", DeLorme Publishing, 1986
"Los Angeles
and Vicinity", Automobile Club of Southern
California, May 1986
"Riverside
County", Automobile
Club of Southern California, March 1988
"San Bernardino
County", Automobile
Club of Southern California, June 1988
"Imperial
County", Automobile
Club of Southern California, June 1988
"Salton Sea", Kym's Guide, Triumph
Press, Los Angeles
1986
United States Geological Survey, 7-1/2 and 15 minute
maps
SECTION II
A POCKETBOOK HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE
YUMA DISTRICT
Introduction
The Southern Pacific Transportation Company (SP) spans
15 states with 17,000 route-miles of track - a western transportation
colossus. Since its earliest
beginnings in 1850 as the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad
serving southeast Texas,
the SP has formed an irreplaceable and historic link in the chain that
has given the West its strength.
The Southern Pacific In Southern
California: The Sunset Route
The history of the SP in California
begins in 1865 with the incorporation of the Southern Pacific Railroad,
its mission to unite the cities of San Francisco
and San Diego, meeting the Texas
and Pacific at San Diego,
to complete a second transcontinental railroad. A second railroad spanning the continent
came about as a result of this, but history would see that the Texas and Pacific was never
involved. This railroad
was to be the creation of the Southern Pacific, through its lessees,
all the way to New Orleans.
By 1874, the SP, which had known for some time the economic
importance of building a second, southern route across the country,
began to actually undertake the task.
This route would take the railroad south through California's
San Joaquin Valley,
up over the rugged Tehachapi Mountains, across the Mojave Desert and
down through Cajon
Pass. From San Bernardino, the rails would turn
east and forge across the Coachella and Imperial Valleys, cross the
Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona, and continue eastward through Tucson
to El Paso, Texas. The stretch
across Texas to Houston and New Orleans would be under the banner of the Galveston, Harrisburg and
San Antonio (GH&SA) and the Texas
and New Orleans
(T&NO) railroads.
Politics in Southern California put a detour in this
most direct route; soon by congressional order the SP would be required
to abandon its route over the Cajon
Pass and instead drop into Los Angeles
via Soledad Pass, entering the Los Angeles
Basin at San Fernando. The citizens of Los Angeles had no desire to be on a hinterland
branch line of such an important railroad and by this Congressional
action they were able to coerce the railroad.
The year 1875 saw the Southern Pacific building down
the San Joaquin Valley
toward the Tehachapis; at the same time, an unconnected piece of SP
track was built in the Los Angeles area
from San Fernando to Spadra, near Pomona.
It would not be until 1876 that these two pieces of railroad
would connect at Lang, near the bottom of Soledad
Canyon, northeast of San Fernando.
Now that SP had grudgingly completed its involuntary
patronage of Los Angeles,
it turned its sights east again.
Beginning at the Spadra terminus, gangs laid track eastward toward
San Bernardino in 1876.
Negotiations with the city of San Bernardino
failed to produce any sort of monetary or real concessions for the railroad;
therefore, SP decided to avoid San Bernardino and created the new town of Colton, named after David
Colton of the Southern Pacific Company.
By fall of 1876 the railroad had made it up through
San Timoteo Canyon, south of Redlands,
and had begun the descent into the Salton Sink. Track building across the Coachella Valley
and the northeastern edge of the Imperial Valley
continued throughout the end of 1876 and into 1877.
The remaining miles across the southeastern tip of California were covered
during the summer of 1877. Soon
the railroad had arrived at the west bank of the Colorado River, immediately
across from the military outpost of Fort
Yuma, across the river in the Arizona Territory.
The Colorado River
was not the only barrier to further eastward progress. The Southern Pacific did not yet have congressional
authorization to proceed east into the Arizona Territory
and so the governor of the Territory forbade SP from bridging the river.
One story of the conquering of Yuma, told by Bill Yenne in his The History
of the Southern Pacific, involves the liberal use of whiskey. The SP threw a grand celebration under
a pretense; all the soldiers from Fort
Yuma were invited
to the bash. The soldiers
proceeded to drink heartily for some five days.
With the Fort out of commission, bridge-building and track-laying
crews spanned the river and laid track into Yuma.
By the time the soldiers had sobered up sufficiently,
the SP was established in Yuma. Although the governor attempted to force
them out, the local citizenry, enthusiastic with the coming of the railroad,
raised a vociferous protest which caused, in short order, the approval
of the SP action by the Territory and allowed for the continued eastward
progress of the railroad. The
Southern Pacific had won the war.
(However colorful this tale is, I suspect that reality
was a bit more monochrome, especially since there were only a few soldiers
stationed at Fort
Yuma; I repeat
it here because it's a cute story.)
By 1881 the railhead was at El Paso.
SP's corporate cousin, the GH&SA out of San
Antonio, was instructed to build west to meet with eastbound
Southern Pacific crews laying railroad out of El Paso.
In 1883 the rails met at the Pecos
River, nearly 300 miles east
of El Paso. The Sunset Route was complete - the second
transcontinental railroad finished.
GEOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY: The Setting for The Yuma Line
One hundred and ninety-five miles of some of the most
exceptional land on the planet separate West Colton,
California, from Yuma, Arizona. The whole country is shaped by planetary
geotectonic forces that manifest themselves as the San Andreas Fault
Zone, a thousand-mile-long crack in the Earth's crust separating the
North American and the Pacific crustal plates.
Los Angeles and the southern coast of California
are attached to the Pacific Plate while most of the rest of North
America rides upon the North American Plate.
The Pacific plate is inching its way north relative
to the North American Plate, and this movement over millions of years
has created the high mountains of the San Bernardino
and San Jacinto
Ranges, along with the deep, arid trough
of the Salton Sink. Few
other places on the planet have such differing environmental conditions
within the space of a few miles as southeastern California.
The Southern Pacific Railroad leaves West Colton, high
on the western bank of the Santa
Ana River;
the rails cross the river five miles east and one hundred twenty-five
feet lower in elevation. At
the river crossing, the railroad is approximately 950 feet above mean
sea level (AMSL). East from
the river crossing the route climbs through Loma Linda and into the
San Timoteo Canyon, the major drainage from the San Timoteo Badlands,
themselves a wrinkled artifact of the busy San
Andreas fault system.
This canyon provides the only reasonable access to the San Gorgonio
Pass, a 2600' Above Mean Sea Level (AMSL) saddle between the 10,804'
Mount San Jacinto and 11,503' San Gorgonio Peak, lying south and north
of the eastward-trending pass and a mere 21 miles apart.
The railroad passes through the town of Beaumont, at
the top of the pass, and drops into Banning, then Cabazon and finally
West Palm Springs before reaching the Coachella Valley floor at Garnet,
about seven miles north of Palm Springs.
The eastern descent from the pass follows closely the drainage
of the San Gorgonio and Whitewater rivers.
The Coachella and Imperial
Valleys define the bottom of
the Salton Sink, with the man-made Salton Sea
currently covering the deepest portion of the sink. The railroad continues southeast from Garnet,
easing down from about 680' AMSL to sea level at the outskirts of Indio, following a near
straight-line path first surveyed over a hundred years ago and now sheltered
from the wind and sand by towering groves of tamarisk trees.
Indio is about 15' below sea level; the rails continue southeast
through Coachella, then Thermal and Mecca,
before bending around the eastern flank of the Salton Sea, where the
railroad is fully 200 feet below sea level. The SP qualifies for the sole honor of
being the railroad built furthest below sea level - the next closest
are railroads (if any) built to waterfront on the Caspian Sea in central
Russia, at a depth
of 92' below sea level. But
at the onset, the SP rails sank even deeper.
The Salton Sea
The Salton Sink has suffered repeated bouts of natural
flooding from the Colorado River. Lake Cahuilla
is the name of the ancient, natural body of water that has occasionally
occupied the Sink; the highest recorded shoreline for this lake was
44 feet above sea level. This
is known because the lake rested at this level long enough for the wind-generated
waves to cut significant benches into the surrounding countryside at
the 44-foot level.
The Salton Sea is a modern analog of Lake Cahuilla
and an artifact of man's existence in southeastern California. In 1901, land speculators and a few major
property holders created the California Development Company, the goal
of which was to bring Colorado River water to the parched but fertile
soil of the Imperial Valley. An
experienced canal-builder and real estate speculator from Los Angeles joined the effort and designed and engineered
the Alamo Canal,
tapping the waters of the Colorado River and bringing them through the
Mexican desert into the Imperial Valley,
a distance of nearly seventy miles.
This proved to be a tremendous boon to the region; the
soil was extremely rich and the climate allowed year-round growing cycles.
The plentiful water from the Colorado
allowed the land, along with the developers' pocketbooks, to blossom. But all was not well. The speculators had dug the canal cheaply,
and had not concerned themselves with the vagaries of the river. Several times in the following few years
the headgates of the canal suffered minor damage due to flood flow on
the Colorado; in 1905 the river succeeded in breaching the inadequate
structure and quickly the rushing water carved a path nearly a half-mile
wide and carrying nearly the full flow of the Colorado.
The Salton Sea was reborn.
The railroad had originally gone south-southeast from
Mecca,
made the sweeping bend east and then angled back to the southeast near
the townsite of Salton. The
tracks continued down through the depths of the sink until well south
of current Bombay Beach;
here the line fell to nearly 270 feet below sea level. The rails turned southeast again and headed
straight toward Niland, back to its present-day course.
The task of the repair of the break and the plugging
of the flow would fall to the Southern Pacific. They would spend two years and over twenty
million dollars, and would have to move their right-of-way through the
sink several times in a constant retreat from the rising water level
in the Sea. In 1907 the flood was finally halted; the
Salton Sea stood at 210 feet below
sea level. Evaporation and
inflow from the farming operations in the valley have stabilized the
surface at about -228 feet.
There is apparently no evidence remaining of the original
route. The current route
follows the 200 foot contour line around the south side of the Bat Cave
Buttes, heading northeast before turning once again to the southeast
at Frink Siding.
The Imperial Valley
The Salton Sea rests at the north end of the Imperial
Valley, filling most of the valley floor remaining between the Santa Rosa Mountains
on the west and the Orocopia
Mountains on the
east.
Over the past few millenia, the Salton Sink has suffered
repeated flooding, making a vast inland sea that would slowly evaporate,
only to be repeated again. But
quite regularly this land would be well below the surface of this saline
lake.
The Bat Cave Buttes and the Salt Creek Wash between
Ferrum and Bertram sidings are eerie, incredible examples of what the
floor of the sea is like. Hiking
around there, the ground is smooth, eroded and clay-coated, with every
handful of dirt producing a dozen tiny shells of the various sea creatures
that lived in this lake.
From Wister, the railroad begins the climb out of the
bottom of the sink and passes through Niland, about 150 feet below sea
level. The tracks continue
the gentle climb up the bottom of this ancient lake toward the ancient
shoreline, just west of MP676.
Obvious signs of the approaching shoreline and beach happen at
about MP675.3 where the rails cut through a ridge; atop this ridge is
where waves broke on an ancient beach.
The land beyond the shoreline is the East Mesa; the railroad continues southeast along this plateau,
skirting the northern tip of the Sand Hills, themselves a result of
the strong easterly winds blowing the fine sand from the bottom of the
Sink. The rugged Chocolate Mountains
and the Cargo
Muchacho Mountains
define the eastern edge of the valley through which the tracks pass. The western side is bounded by the Sand
Hills.
South of Glamis the railroad continues onto the Pilot
Knob Mesa; in the far distance the spire of Pilot Knob itself is visible
and the tracks will aim at this mountain for the next twenty miles. All the drainages from the mountains along
the east carry stormwater into the natural sink of the Sand Hills in
the west; these flows can be heavy as is evidenced by the number and
size of the culverts passing under the roadbed.
The Yuma
Valley
Just past Dunes at MP723 the path bends east and begins
the descent toward the Colorado River; the rails pass across the south
shoulder of the broad alluvial fan emanating from the Cargo Muchacho
Mountains, using
cut and fill to cross the multiple south-trending gullies and washes. The final few miles to Araz switch are
followed by the double main track that snakes down the remainder of
the alluvial ridge, crossing the All-American
Canal and riding
out promptly onto the broad floodplain.
The tracks continue east on a high embankment across
the fertile, irrigated farmlands of Winterhaven; the Winterhaven crossover
rests upon this fill which can reach a height of some thirty feet.
The railroad originally crossed the Colorado River about
a half-mile west of the current steel bridge; the alignment took the
rails across the river and down the center of Madison Street in Yuma, Arizona. Today, evidence of this path has faded,
with a few sections of embankment on the California
side and a broad open swath running through the middle of Yuma's downtown district. In 1926 the modern steel bridge was opened
to traffic, anchored in the two hills that act as a gate for the Colorado River.
The Yuma railroad station
is situated about 0.5 miles south of the crossing at MP732.7 and is
the crew change point and is technically the meeting point for the Los
Angeles (now West Colton)
and Tucson Divisions. In
actuality, the West Colton Division maintains jurisdiction of the railroad
all the way to the division marker at MP738.8 as part of the Yuma District.
Sightseeing the Yuma District: Driving Out There
The railroad for most of its entire distance is bounded
either on the north or south by an access road. In general the placement of important equipment
like signal boxes and signals will be on the same side of the tracks
as the road. This way signalmen
and other maintenance-of-way folks needn't cross the tracks to get to
most of the equipment. This
road is usually the main route and sometimes the only way for rubber-tired
vehicles to have access to the rails. It can be rather rough, and very
tough on a vehicle.
There is no single proper vehicle for getting to 99%
of the locations addressed in this book.
The family sedan will work as well as a high-clearance four-wheel-drive
truck with big tires and little Chromium Cuties on the mudflaps. The patience, skill and plain daring of
the driver count for a lot.
Ground surfaces vary from paved road to gravel to loamy
soil to sand to rock flour to sheer, unadulterated glop. All but the last are approachable in the
family car (unless you or the family car has a death wish). The most important thing is to know how
to drive for the conditions and to be prepared for the consequences
when you make a mistake. And
this is not a primer on desert driving.
I tend to do most of my sightseeing alone; I have gotten
myself buried in the dust at old Tortuga Siding, had the battery die
at Iris, almost mired in the thick powder at Colorado, stuck in sand
drifts near Salvia; trapped in the mud near Brawley, and lost automotive
trim everywhere. If you
see bits of a 1981 tan diesel Rabbit, they're probably mine. But the point remains, I've never yet not
been able to dig myself out. It's
just a matter of preparation, perspiration, persistence and maybe a
little luck.
One of my mottoes is (or should be): "When in doubt,
walk it out". In other
words, if the road ahead looks chancy, get out and check it on foot. If confidence returns upon inspection,
you might want to go onward. But
remember, getting stuck without the proper supplies is crazy. And both my lawyers and I want you to remember
that I didn't tell you to do ANYTHING. In fact, that's why I wrote this book.
So all you'd have to do is sit in a cozy armchair at home and
read.
This railroad runs through one of the hottest, driest
and most desolate pieces of desert in the Outback. Bring water. I repeat: Bring WATER. During the warmer months bring LOTS of
water, which means at least a few gallons per person per day.
Carry a two-way Citizens' Band radio. Or if you're so inclined, get yourself
a Amateur Radio License. Or
carry a cellular telephone but remember, there's not much coverage in
the backcountry. Carry a jacket for the chilly nights and
a supply of food. Buy (and
read) a book on desert survival.
But don't go out unprepared.
It's not fun when the only alternative is a ten-mile stroll in
120 degree heat.
Weather
Be prepared for extremes. Mainly high temperatures, to be sure, though
winter evenings through the San Gorgonio Pass can drop into the teens;
the air temperature on summer days east of Niland can be greater than
120 degrees Fahrenheit; the ground temperatures are much higher. I know; I've measured it. Check with the National Weather Service
or other local weather information sources before heading out; heat,
cold or thunderstorms can be problematic at best or deadly at worst.
High winds and blowing sand can especially plague the
Coachella
Valley near the mouth of the San Gorgonio
Pass; this natural sandblast can etch your car's windshield. Of course,
the fashionable residents of Palm
Desert have had
to live with this reality for a long time.
So you won't be alone.
Watch out for the extremely infrequent but very dangerous
flash floods in desert canyons and washes.
One of my friends has a personal story that details the innocuous
peals of far-off thunder followed minutes later by a large rush of water
roaring down the canyon, scouring the wash and nearly flooding his car. In August 1989 a fair bit of tracks from
the east end of south Garnet down to about Date Palm Drive suffered substantial damage
due to flooding, this out in the near flats of the Valley floor. Pay attention to where the clouds are and
where your vehicle and you are not.
Don't camp in a wash while there is any chance of rain within
sight.
SECTION III
RAILROAD PHYSICAL PLANT AND OPERATIONS
Introduction
The SP is more than a bunch of MBAs, accountants and
130 years of history; there are dozens of trains active over the district
at any time, somewhere on those 1500 route-miles of track. The physical plant is its complex, expensive
and dynamic skeleton, consisting of all the hardware that makes the
trains run, including the trains themselves.
Trackage: The Mainline
Within the Yuma District, the Yuma Line is the "main"
line that carries through traffic in the district. Beginning at West Colton at the junction
of the Basin District's Colton and Alhambra
Lines, the Yuma Line extends nearly two hundred miles southeast to Yuma, Arizona,
handing off traffic there to the Gila Line of the Tucson Division.
Much of the traffic that uses the line is either originating
or completing its journey at Los Angeles,
and often at the ICTF complex in Wilmington,
between Long Beach
and San Pedro. The remainder is through-traffic, with trains running
to and from the Bay Area and Oregon
regularly rolling up and down the Yuma Line, carrying vast assortments
of products bound for the middle of the country.
Trackage: Branchlines
There are six active branchlines within the District.
Until October 1989, the San Bernardino and Riverside
Branches were part of the Yuma District; between them there is maybe
ten miles of track. In the
Imperial Valley, the Calexico Branch separates from the
Yuma Line at Niland, leading south to the Sandia and El Centro Branches,
a total of about seventy-five route-miles.
Finally, at Yuma
the Somerton Branch (Yuma Valley Railroad) peels off from the mainline,
providing yet another six route-miles of track. All the branch routes together constitute
less than half the length of the main line within the District.
Trackage: Yards
Although there are several places along the railroad
that qualify as railroad yards, West Colton Classification Yard is the
only facility of truly massive size; from one end to the other, West
Colton stretches over five miles in length, with fueling facilities,
a hump yard, service facilities and a major administration building.
Other, much smaller and less-busy yards include Indio, Niland and Yuma;
even these only see a few movements a day.
The interchange yard at Ferrum is currently used only for storage;
El Centro sees occasional
activity.
Trackage: Trackside Detectors
Trains are mechanical beasties, and pretty tremendous
mechanical beasties at that. There's
lots of stress and st |