OPPOSITE LEFT: The classic look of Santa Fe on Cajon: EMD’s and GE’s in lightly-weathered yellowbonnet led piggybacks up the North Track just below Alray on January 29, 1984, with a dusting of snow on the distant San Gabriel Mountains. BELOW: A nearly two-mile hike the morning of February 25, 1984, enabled this view of an eastbound SP intermodal descending Beaumont Hill between West Palm Springs and Garnet. BOTTOM: Back from the dead for one final fling, DDA40X 6905 dwarfed the SD40-2s coupled around it on a UP train climbing east around the big curve between Pine Lodge and Alray on Cajon Pass on April 1, 1984.
school, and about the time I was broad- ening my own railfan exploits with a Pentax K1000. It goes without saying that the photography of Steinheimer, Sims, and others which appeared in that book made a huge impact on any- one who was growing up with trains in the bottom half of the Golden State. But the map by John Signor really summed up the underlying theme. In his well-known “bird’s eye” aerial per- spective, Signor depicted railroading in southern California as anchored by the oval basin containing Los Angeles and San Bernardino, with separate routes of the Santa Fe, SP, and UP running between both cities and their related yards and industries. Rail lines were shown exiting the basin in every direc- tion by whatever means available through the surrounding mountains. Santa Susana Pass and Soledad Canyon to the north, Cajon Pass and San Timoteo Canyon/Beaumont Hill to the east, my own Orange County sub- urbs and the Surf Line to the south, plus the mysterious Mojave Desert out there in the great beyond. The average “SoCal” resident even- tually buys into the concept of “why live anywhere else?” Among the area’s rail- fans, there was indeed a sense that no other place on Earth could boast such a variety of railroading and scenery, from fast passengers to drag freights, amid beaches, big cities, mountains,
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