Summit, Cajon Pass, California, 1950's

Really great photos!!!!!

 

Matt, you may want to check your figures, on that "2.2% grade, for five miles". It has been some 46 years since I was working with the Santa Fe there at San Bernardino Shops, riding SD45 units up Cajon Pass, but I'm pretty sure that grade is a LOT longer than five miles.

 

Thanks for posting those great "old days" photos!

Hot Water,

You're probably right.  It might have said more than 5 miles of grade.  Did you ever pass thru Summit?  Matt

I sure did "pass through Summit", probably a few times a week, i.e. every time I rode a set of SD45s up the Cajon Pass Grade. Maybe Number 90 will chime in here, has he was an Engineer and Supervisor out that way, and should be able to tell us exactly how long the Cajon Pass Grade is (I'm thinking better than 20 miles?), without me going to books and looking it up.

Milepost 55.9 Summit to MP 79.9 Baseline

Nice photos.

 

The Descanso was a funeral car that served several mortuaries and cemeteries on the Los Angeles Railway. The casket was loaded through side doors and mourners accompanied the casket to the cemetery where a hearse would pick up the casket for transport to the burial site.

 

The car was hauled up to summit after retirement as a cabin, then later used as a railfan hangout. Orange Empire Railway museum has the car now and it has been restored (at least cosmetically). I don't know if it's actually operable and if so, whether they take it out on their loop.

 

I haven't been up through the pass in a while, but on the return trip I always take old Route 66 so I can temporarily leave the Isle of Denial, stop and watch trains. Never went up to Summit as some areas up there are murky as to what is and what isn't railroad property (saw someone being stopped by Mormon Rocks a few months back.)

Summit is MP 55.9, Cajon, the bottom of the steepest grade is MP 62.8.

The original main track, now called Track 3, has a 3% gradient.  Main tracks

1 and 2, which were built later, are 2 miles longer, and have a 2.2% gradient.

The SP Palmdale Cutoff (now UP) basically parallels the BNSF tracks, and also

has a gradient of 2.2%.

 

It's one of the most wonderful railroad places I've ever been.  In the 4 hours I

spent there on March 14 of this year, I saw at least 20 trains.  I have photos

and videos of as many as 3 trains moving at the same time.

 

Cajon pass averages 90 trains per day.

 

Lee

Interesting changes at Cajon since the SP UP merger. Due to congestion on the UP in Wyoming and Nebraska, busiest railroad in the world, UP has been diverting traffic off the original UP line from LA to Salt Lake on to the SP Sunset route, which they are double tracking from Palm Springs to El Paso.  This results in less original UP traffic going up the Santa Fe to Summit.  Also the UP put crossovers in just west of Summit and east of Devore so some of the old remaining UP traffic can be diverted off the Santa Fe on to the SP to go up the grade and put back on the Santa Fe at the top where it will then come off the Santa Fe and on to the original UP line at Daggett.  It looks like much of the derived UP traffic is being filled in with additional BN trains.  BN has been double tracking the Santa Fe line from Chicago to LA to handle more traffic which should off the loss of UP traffic up Cajon.  

To get an idea of what it's like at Cajon, here's a video I shot in March of this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldW8rWjrlA

 

Sorry Lee but Cajon is NOT the bottom of the grade. It is where the 3 tracks come together and continue down hill to San Bernardino. Mountain grade territory and all the restrictions related to it (in the Cajon Pass, east and west) continue westward until MP 78.0, just east of Baseline at MP 79.9. 

 

You are correct that main track 3 is the steepest at 3%, the original track through the pass. Verdemont at MP 74 is one of the steepest sections in the pass, other than the 3% Main 3. Many people have and do refer to Cajon as the bottom of the hill, but it's not....... not by a long shot.

Thanks for that.  Will have to check out Verdemont when I'm there next March.

 

Lee

I grew up in SoCal and always enjoyed driving up "the hill" through Cajon Pass. I even got to ride an excursion train behind UP 3985 from Ontario to Barstow and back.

Lee, Verdemont starts a 5+ mile stretch of straight track along Cajon Blvd. You'd never realize how steep it actually is by looking at it from the street. If you're driving by on the street (Cajon Blvd or I-215), you can easily spot Verdemont as that's where the big concrete grain facility is. It's actually called Horizon Milling now, but still has the big green CARGILL logo on the silos. The 2.2% grade on all 3 tracks continues down from Cajon just past Verdemont where it then drops to 1.97% at MP 76 (2 miles west of Veremont) and continues the rest of the way to Baseline at MP 79.