The Process

There has been more than one occasion that I have fielded the inquiry of where the ideas for articles originate in my somewhat disorganized but yet complicated mind. Good, bad or indifferent, this is the process.

Before we get started, a little background info would be of great assistance. I was born in 1955 to mostly native Californians in Riverside, a rail shipping giant in the citrus industry and one of the first major stops for all Union Pacific passenger trains leaving Los Angeles for points east and one of the last stops westbound before arriving in LA.

My great grandfather, Frank Hannum, worked his entire life for the Union Pacific railroad. I have written a few articles on different aspects of this history, so let us suffice it to say that somewhere in that mix a true train geek emerged, and it doesn’t take much in the way of prodding to get my brain thinking of trains. This time around, a simple phone call from my eldest son, Chris, was the catalyst of the prod.

A couple of days ago, Chris called to relay some information to me.

While getting gas here in town, he met and talked to someone. On their way up the mountain from Bakersfield, they had seen an eastbound train with a locomotive in the mix from Canada.

Seems this train had wandered quite some distance from home. That started the grey matter to churn, and here we are in “The Loop.”

In the beginning, the railroads were not unlike bickering siblings. It took decades of laws, lawsuits, legislation and government intervention to get the major railroad companies to play nice together. Train traffic through Tehachapi is a by-product of this.

Once upon a time in the later part of the 19th century there was only the Southern Pacific RR Co. driving trains over the Tehachapis. They had a monopoly on this pass between Southern California, the fertile and desirable San Joaquin Valley and all points north. Leland Stanford and his group of tycoons had a stranglehold on rail traffic into and out of California. The Santa Fe RR Co. (AT&SF) was building west across Arizona and desperately wanted access into California. Santa Fe had federal grants and right of way into California at “The Needles” on the California side of the Colorado River. Standing in their way was the Southern Pacific, who refused to let them cross their tracks. A war ensued between the two railroads. At one point, a Santa Fe track crew snuck in late one night and installed a crossing through SP’s track.

The following day a Southern Pacific crew ripped it out.

In the end threats of severe involvement of the federal government, lawsuits and the fact that they knew they were in the wrong, Southern Pacific relinquished their tracks and right of way from “The Needles” (Needles, Calif.), through Barstow and into Mojave to the Santa Fe.

Santa Fe was also granted trackage rights over the Tehachapis and into Bakersfield as part of this more than a century old “out of court” settlement between the two railroads. This is why, to this day, the two railroads share common tracks through Tehachapi.

The onset of World War II put American railroads in a position of “play nice together or else” mandates from the government. It took a monumental effort to facilitate and orchestrate the colossal movement of men and equipment across this continent by rail, and – to their credit – the railroads came through.

n more recent times, in this same spirit of cooperation, railroads in both the US and Canada that have more locomotives than they need in the foreseeable near future, lease them to other railroads that are in need of extra locomotives but don’t want the massive outlay in money to build new ones. This Canadian Pacific loco was leased, along with several others, to BNSF and from one assignment to the next has slowly worked its way south.

The Tehachapis have seen locos from Norfolk Southern, Chessie System, Wisconsin Central and others helping haul tonnage over these mountains, working their way over thousands of miles of tracks until they return home.