and desert. Thirty years ago this summer, I left southern California and followed my parents back to our Northwest roots, not to escape the imminent tyranny predicted in George Orwell’s novel “1984,” nor in response to the David Bowie song “1984” and its forewarning of Orwellian doom. We were merely seeking cleaner air, fresher water, qui- eter nights, an easier commute, and fun times amongst trees and wide open spaces without the kind of weekend traffic jams that so often besieged So- Cal’s beaches and Big Bear Lake. At least my life as a Californian ended with a bit of a bang, because from a railfanning standpoint, there was a heck of a lot going on in SoCal in 1984.
RIGHT: Fans who gathered at Santa Susana Pass on June 19, 1984, to photograph SP 4449 witnessed another bit of fading history in the form of a ubiquitous SP bay window caboose that trailed empty sugar beet racks down the hill. BELOW: UP’s concrete arch viaduct west of Riverside carried an eastbound UP freight and its trio of SD40-2s across the Santa Ana River on April 6, 1984.
Big Hair, Boosters and Cabooses Anywhere you drove in 1984, the ra- dio would inevitably unleash that syn- thesizer intro leading into “Jump,” the big hit song off the just-released album “1984” by Van Halen, L.A.’s own contri-
bution to the genre of “hair metal” mu- sic.
East of L.A.,
Bernardino’s contribution to the genre of heavy metal
meanwhile, San motive power had
emerged from the Santa Fe shops in the final weeks of 1983 and was begin-
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