San Diego & Arizona Eastern Canadian Pacific Ends Lease on IC&E Geeps
IOWA, CHICAGO & EASTERN’S TEN FORMER COTTON BELT GP40-2S have been re- turned to National Railway Equipment by Canadian Pacific and were picked up by Helm Leas- ing. They were very neatly renumbered (by adding ten to the previous number) and stenciled for Helm at NRE’s Silvis, Ill., shops before being sent to Metro East Industries in East St. Louis for work. On February 24, 2013 No. 4214 (ex-ICE 4204 City of Cordeva, née SSW 7268) was at TRRA’s Madison yard en route to MEI.
seen about a 30 per cent decline in the volume of cars. At the same time, improvements in op- erations have opened up network capacity so that classification no longer needs to be done at Roanoke. Terry Evans, vice president trans- portation, said “. . . the geographical location and layout of the hump yard make it not only
expensive, but redundant . . .” Roanoke will no longer serve as a regional classification yard, but NS will continue to op- erate the Shaffers Crossing locomotive and car shops, the East End locomotive shops, the Roanoke material yard, and will maintain its Virginia Division headquarters in the city.
REVITALIZATION PLAN IS IN PLAY: Companies in the United States and México have embarked on an effort to rebuild the for- mer San Diego & Arizona Eastern between San Diego and Plaster City, Calif., via Tijuana and Tecate, Baja California, México. Re-estab- lishing international rail service over what’s now known as the Desert Line will allow Mex- ican shippers to avoid delays at the congested Otay Mesa border crossing. Potential cus- tomers include the Toyota Manufacturing de México assembly plant near Tecate, which builds Tacoma pickup trucks that are current- ly trucked into the U.S. Inbound auto parts and other materials and supplies for the “maquiladora” industry could also be handled as ten “large” companies in México are report- edly interested in using rail service when it becomes available. The 70-mile segment in the U.S. between
the border at Division, Calif., and an inter- change with Union Pacific at Plaster City is owned by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, which on December 20, 2013, leased the line to Pacific International Railroad (PIR) for 50 years with an option to renew for another 49 years. The lease stipulates a strict timeline of benchmarks which PIR must meet. 90 days after the date of the lease, PIR must submit a reconstruction plan and the line must be brought up to FRA Class I standards 12 months after the plan is approved, with a test train operated 30 days after that. Triweekly “limited operations” must start 36 months after the effective date of the lease, with the track upgraded to FRA Class II standards. “Full scale repairs” must be completed within five years with “full scale” operations com- mencing 30 days thereafter; that could even- tually mean four or five trains a day. The line’s 57 bridges and tunnels, including
the monumental curved timber trestle across Goat Canyon, present an expensive challenge and will need to handle 286,000 lb. gross weight freight cars. The lease also stipulates that the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum will continue to operate its passenger excur- sions out of Campo and that SD&AE (MTA) “reserves the right to operate passenger and/or commuter rail services” in the future. South of the border, Baja California Rail-
Cliffside Railroad 2-6-2 Returns to North Carolina
THE STONE MOUNTAIN MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION of Stone Mountain, Ga., has donat- ed former Cliffside Railroad 2-6-2 No. 110 to the New Hope Valley Railway in Bonsal, N.C. The 1927 Vulcan was built for McRae Lumber & Manufacturing and was acquired by the three-mile railroad in Cliffside, N.C., in 1933. It was retired in 1962 and later went to Georgia’s Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad near Atlanta, where it was named Yonah II after a locomotive that had been involved in the Civil War’s Great Locomotive Chase. After nearly 60 years at the Geor- gia historic site, the locomotive was offered to NHVR free for the moving and after two years of preparation it took eight days to truck the locomotive 320 miles to its new home in North Caroli- na. The group plans to restore No. 110 to operation, a task that’s expected to take at least five years and may cost up to $600,000. Ironically, No. 110’s onetime stablemate at Cliffside, 2-8-0 No. 40, has been operating for years at another New Hope — in Pennsylvania.
26 MARCH 2013 •
RAILFAN.COM
road, Inc., will rebuild and operate about 45 miles of the line between Tijuana and the bor- der near Tecate. The company has a 30-year operating agreement with the federal govern- ment, and rehabilitation of the first 12 miles between San Ysidro and El Florido is sup- posed to start in May. In total, the project is expected to cost $120 million or more.
Saratoga & North Creek
FREIGHT SERVICE BEGINS: Saratoga & North Creek handled its first load of revenue freight on the newly-acquired line between North Creek and Tahawus on February 10, 2013. A single boxcar load of garnet moved out of the Barton International garnet mine in North River, N.Y., bound for Louisiana via the Canadian Pacific interchange in Saratoga Springs.
STEEVE DEGAETANO
MARK MAUTNER
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