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An eastbound Santa Fe manifest crosses the landmark Santa Fe trestle at Larkspur, Colorado. During this era, Santa Fe trains were in the minority on the Joint Line. Traffic was dominated by Burlington Northern Powder River coal trains and returning empties.
At the end of a long day spent driving through Abo Canyon we caught one of Santa Fe's SD75Ms screaming out of the siding at Sais, NM on its last lap into Belen. It was a challenge holding my 300 mm lens steady in the fierce wind that sprung up just before sundown.
A Santa Fe GP20 trundles past the depot at Littleton, Colorado. A nicely restored version of the depot exists today, in the middle of an urban sprawl.
A half-dozen GP35’s, with a GP30 thrown in for good measure, lead an eastbound Santa Fe auto train up the grade at Cajon, California.
Viewed from across a cut on the south track on Cajon Pass, a westbound Santa Fe train with 26 piggyback flats descends the Pass on the north track at 12:08 pm. Two GP35's bracket two GP30's on this train.
Four Santa Fe six-axles, two EMD’s and two GE’s, ease a westbound manifest down the Grade at Cajon, California.
An eastbound TOFC train stretches back to the next town, Hazelton, as it rises out of the sag south of Crisfield, KS.
On August 21, 1991, 34 years ago, Santa Fe B23-7 6406 leads westbound trailers up the grade of the Caprock escarpment between the sidings of Buenos and Southland in rattlesnake country of West Texas. This is the Texas mainline connecting Galveston/Houston/Dallas with the Transcon at Clovis, New Mexico. The train has just left rugged ranching and oil country and will top out in a few minutes in very flat farm and oil country. Photo by Joe McMillan.
Crossing perhaps the most-photographed railroad bridge in Colorado, a southbound Santa Fe manifest passes through Larkspur, Colorado.
Santa Fe's longest branch line, the San Angelo Subdivision, ran 386 miles across desolate West Texas from San Angelo Junction (west of Brownwood on the Texas main line) to Presidio, Texas, on the Mexican border.
In October 1968, it took me three days of engine and caboose riding to make the trip from Brownwood to Presidio. The first day got me from Brownwood to San Angelo, 71 miles, mostly at night; the second day had me riding a trailing F-unit from San Angelo to Fort Stockton, 167 miles, on train 129; and the third day was a caboose ride from Fort Stockton to Presidio, 145 miles. Yes, it was a long trip. The last segment, from Fort Stockton to Presidio, was mainly at night.
We arrived at the border station just after sun up. The crew went on their rest. I wandered around the area all-day, going to Ojinaga on the Mexican side to photograph the Chihuahua Pacific Railroad (Ch-P), one of my all-time favorite railroads.
Late in the afternoon, the crew went on duty and did some switching and shoved a long cut of cars down to the International bridge to transfer to the Ch-P. In this scene at sunset, October 18, 1968, the units (a GP7 and two GP7Bs) and caboose pause in front of the station while the crew gets their orders to head back to Fort Stockton. It will be another all-night caboose trip, but I will get off at Alpine, Texas, in the wee hours and get a motel room. The following day, I will catch SP's SUNSET LIMITED to El Paso, another Santa Fe freight to Belen, New Mexico, and more freights back to my home in Topeka, Kansas.
The San Angelo Subdivision was once the main line of the KCM&O, a segment in Arthur Stilwell's dream to build a railroad from Kansas City to the Gulf of California, a shorter distance to the Pacific than Kansas City to California ports. Santa Fe acquired the KCM&O in 1928, but it never developed as a through route as planned.
The Subdivision was sold in 1998, and there are still attempts to establish through service.
The depot, shown in this image, was destroyed by fire a few years later.
As a westbound Santa Fe piggyback train descends the western slope of Tehachapi, waycar 999279 puts a soon-to-disappear punctuation point on the end of the train. The caboose has just exited Tunnel 6, and the power is out of sight in the vicinity of Bealville.
During my weekend visit to Tehachapi Pass the weekend of 1/11/1997, I started seeing the beginning of the end for Santa Fe power. There was green BN and a few BNSF Heritage I units mixed in with war bonnets and classic Santa Fe blue and yellow. But there were also a few solid Santa Fe lashups to enjoy. Here is solid blue and yellow lashup on an S-RICH with a standard cab GP60 in the lead. It had crested the Summit a few miles back and is cruising down the 50mph section between Tehachapi and Warren. I was hoping for a chance at a little more white stuff but this was about the most that I saw.
An eastbound Santa Fe manifest, led by a GP30 and a half-dozen GP35’s, passes two Southern Pacific SD9’s on a work train at Cliff. Caliente is visible over the cab of the lead unit. All of the GP30’s and GP35’s running on the Santa Fe at that time took me back to my days watching the Reading Company a decade earlier. Those two models were the backbone of the Reading’s second-generation road power. I checked an old calendar, and this was taken on a Thursday.