A UP drifts downhill west of Caliente in the evening light
And going away. Those grotty locos give a neat textured glint effect
A BNSF train treads carefully past the debris from a recent derailment near tunnel 1
Helpers in the same train head down through the Caliente horseshoe
At Sandcut, the same train rides into the sunset
Aforementioned sunset
Back at the loop
Thursday morning and a BNSF south/westbound approaches Tehachapi
Near Marcel
The Monolith shunt has some decent horsepower today in the form of a very smoky SD90
A colorful consist whizzes past with me in hot pursuit (well, as fast as a two ton ute can pursue)
Quick enough to beat it to Marcel
And then Woodford
And then Tunnel 5. Not a great shot thanks to the sun angle, but hey, at least it's different.
And then Bealville. This is a crappy different shot too.
Oooooo. Classic Tunnel 5
I really screwed up the focus on this somehow, but I'm including it just to torture you
Friday morning's crappy picfest... but after the trudge into Allard, it's the only one with decent sun. And it has the interesting ex CSX jobbie
All these trains keep coming from the wrong direction. Whatever happened to the post sunrise BNSF uphill train parade?
Another downhill!!! With an illegal immigrant!! Give me an uphill damn you
Crap, a filthy UP train, followed by this one with a cleanish mini dash 8 on the pointy end
This train is too short for this location but I can't be bothered hanging around here with this kind of luck
Finally a long train and it's almost clean. Actually, this is a huge train for two locos (a fair chunk is out of sight in the Allard horseshoe)
Woohoo!!!! An SP loco! SD70M leads an ex-DRGW-ex-SP SD50 and CSX Dash 8
Better get another shot of that. How often do I see SP locos on the mainline these days?
UP locos painted in the new 'dirt' color scheme head through Cable with their manifest
Still at Cable, the UP baby dash train cops a nasty sun angle as it...
...passes a waiting BNSF train with an interesting mix of color
The cleanish intermodal heads through Cable
After a three hour wait, the shadows encroach on a BNSF stack train threading its way down Clear Creek.
A decent sized BNSF manifest strung out around Caliente
And passing the derailment site near Tunnel 1
Saturday morning between Woodford and the loop.
And two shots for the price of one walk. There were a few UP trains as well, but we're not going to post that filthy junk here.
A nice set of Dash 9s in need of some more contrail eradication.
Grotty loco, grotty train, grotty clouds, but a nice location with a Yucca flower
Ditto with a cleaner loco - lead one is an AC
A wider angle than normal at Tunnel 2
I don't normally take shots like this, but even with the sun off the nose, I quite like these SD70s at the loop
After a camera interface problem (I screwed up) with a perfect BNSF downhill, I had to wait three more trains to get this one. I apologize for this shot - I'm trespassing and that's why the clouds appeared.
A GP60M brings up the rear of this consist in Clear Creek
Quite a nice shot again at CC. I had to wait (again) and the shadows prevented the wide shot (again).
Might as well pop off a quickie, if you'll pardon the expression, on the way out of Bealville. Full speed to the airport!