Last night I returned from 7 days in the deserts of southern California and Arizona with my friends Robert Scott and Mike “Mad Dog” Sawyer. Our trip took us to popular locations like Tehachapi, Ludlow, and Kingman as well as some less publicized locations like Rogoza, Hackberry, and Lavic. The weather on the trip covered all 4 seasons with fresh snow appearing on the Tehachapi and San Bernardino mountains, spring thunderstorms popping over Barstow, and enough sun to get a bit of a sun burn at Klienfelter. The most shocking weather though was not any of what I just listed but rather the constant rain that fell on the desert for one entire day. Yep, rain. It was the kind of rain we normally get in Vancouver, the kind that gets you real wet but doesn’t amount to all that much in the rain gauge. Despite the rain I’m ready to go back!
There was plenty of train action everywhere we traveled. Robert’s record keeping shows that we photographed 15-20 trains everyday. As typical with the transcon there are always a few trains that end up not being recorded on compact flash during relocation drives. Hey, its the transcon so there’s always another one along soon!! The Sunset route was just about as busy but since train speeds are a bit slower and meets are frequent in the single track sections so getting around a train for a photo isn’t too hard.
Over the next few weeks I’ll continue to post some of my favorites from the adventure. While I’m catching up here’s a favorite from Newberry Springs east of Barstow. The thunderstorm in the back ground dumped hail on Barstow and made a muddy mess of the washes along the Salton Sea. Despite its destructive potential, the storm made a great backdrop for an eastbound stack train launching out of Barstow at track speed.
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