Snaking Down The Mountain
Continuing with these decade old photos I dug out but never processed.
An unidentified BNSF stack train is descending the approximately 2.5% grade as it drops down Tehachapi Pass northbound on Union Pacific's Mojave Sub mainline. They are on a 1.2 mile long stretch of single track between the north end of Cliff siding and the south end of Bealville siding. On the hillside beyond their train is emerging from 1175 ft long Tunnel 5 and just behind me they will plunge into 494 ft long Tunnel 3. Prior to the 7.3 magnitude Kern County Earthquake in 1952 the train would be about to enter Tunnel 4, but after the devastation wrought by that temblor part of the mountain was removed and the tracks were located around the former tunnel which was sealed. Portions of the exposed reinforced concrete lining are still plainly visible to this day.
The route over the pass was truly an engineering feat of its day and is no less impressive nearly a century and a half on. Southern Pacific assistant chief engineer William Hood devised the ingenious method of 18 tunnels in 28 miles of track climbing up over the Tehachapi Mountains from Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley below. Constructed between 1874 and 1876 the signature achievement on this remarkable mountain railroad is the famed loop. In 1898 the Santa Fe acquired trackage rights over the pass between Mojave and Bakersfield which have continued unabated to the present as a core route of successor BNSF.
Kern County, California
Saturday May 3, 2014
Snaking Down The Mountain
Continuing with these decade old photos I dug out but never processed.
An unidentified BNSF stack train is descending the approximately 2.5% grade as it drops down Tehachapi Pass northbound on Union Pacific's Mojave Sub mainline. They are on a 1.2 mile long stretch of single track between the north end of Cliff siding and the south end of Bealville siding. On the hillside beyond their train is emerging from 1175 ft long Tunnel 5 and just behind me they will plunge into 494 ft long Tunnel 3. Prior to the 7.3 magnitude Kern County Earthquake in 1952 the train would be about to enter Tunnel 4, but after the devastation wrought by that temblor part of the mountain was removed and the tracks were located around the former tunnel which was sealed. Portions of the exposed reinforced concrete lining are still plainly visible to this day.
The route over the pass was truly an engineering feat of its day and is no less impressive nearly a century and a half on. Southern Pacific assistant chief engineer William Hood devised the ingenious method of 18 tunnels in 28 miles of track climbing up over the Tehachapi Mountains from Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley below. Constructed between 1874 and 1876 the signature achievement on this remarkable mountain railroad is the famed loop. In 1898 the Santa Fe acquired trackage rights over the pass between Mojave and Bakersfield which have continued unabated to the present as a core route of successor BNSF.
Kern County, California
Saturday May 3, 2014