From Fresno to Mojave

Today we relocated to Mojave.

After last nights rain, the day dawned foggy, but it soon burned off to reveal patchy cloud. We spent 30 minutes at the Fresno Amtrak where we caught a BNSF freight and Amtrak's San Joaquin service.

A quick at the BNSF depot at Fresno revealed that there were almost just as many Canadian Pacific units on hand as there were BNSF. There was also a Norfolk Southern unit sitting there to be photographed as well. We saw one train pass through but the view was blocked, but was going slow enough to be chased. It ended up being a UP manifest and it gave us no end of grief. It was pulling into many loops to allow others to pass, but we couldn't manage to film it.

We then had lunch at Tulare where we over to Cororan and highway 43 which we followed to Bakersfield, which was by-passed so we could get to Tehachapi sooner. Along HWY 43 the signals indicated that a meet was imminent, so we hung around, and sure enough, it happened within 5 minutes.

On to Tehachapi Pass, we stopped at Tunnel 2 and filmed a slow intermodal crawling up-hill - which turned out to be one of the trains we saw on HWY 43. We attempted a chase to Bealville, but it beat us.

Things then started to go astray - the intermodal just stopped on  the main line while climbing out of Bealville, so we continued onto the Tehachapi Loop at Walong iteself. Along the way we noticed 3 trains were parked up in passing loops before the loop, and another four were parked up on the other side. Nothing was moving.... and nothing continued to move for at least another hour.

A spot of shopping was done at K-Mart and we moved on to Mojave to settle in for the night.

The weather: freezing cold wind at Tehachapi township, but warm and calm at Caliente and Bealville. There is a dusting of snow on the hills and the locals are talking about more tonight - great. It seems that the foul weather is a welcome sight for the locals - the land is very parched - especially for Spring time.

Photos below:

BNSF depot at Fresno - arty reflection shot

Union Pacific manifest at Selma.

A meet along Highway 43 somewhere between Corcoran and Bakersfield - third unit is CSX - yay !!

Easy to take photos like these when the train isn't even moving. Monolith, between Tehachapi and Mojave.

Another one at Monolith, but closer to Mojave.