Switching cars at Union Pacific's Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF), in Long Beach adjacent to their Dolores Yard, are UP SD40M-2 2664 (for all intents and purposes and SD45) and an SD... (more)

Meandering one of many "S" curves of Donner Pass, former SP 119 now UP 6223 lead an eastbound autorack train up the West Slope.

Night operations on the Tehachapi Pass is a completely different world. Here a north bound manifest quickly drifts down the grade between tunnels 1 and 2 as the headlights light the right of way t... (more)

Clinging to the side of the hill, alongside Highway 58 in the upper Tehachapi mountains, a morning south bound Union Pacific intermodal battles up the steep grade and through tunnel 14 as the morn... (more)

High above the Shasta Valley, the northbound Coast Starlight crosses Dry Canyon in summer 1994. An Amtrak engineer once told me that if the signals were all green and the train was making track sp... (more)

In 1987-1988, Southern Pacific closed the Modoc Line to through traffic. If the Modoc had been open, this EURGM would have been closing in on Alturas. Instead, the train is crossing Dry Canyon Via... (more)

2 units lead an eastbound Herzog train for another load at Mudrock, UT.

The Niles Canyon Railway yard in Brightside, Ca. With it's panoply of engines, one can still feel what it was like to work with one of those horses.

One of the last patched SP AC4400's leads an eastbound ZLAMQ as it nears the top of the climb up Beaumont Hill.

A quartet of grimy Southern Pacific SDs roll through the Devil's Garden. This area is a lava flow created by eruptions of nearby Mount Shasta.

Union Pacific SD70ACe No. 8746 rolls a 2 car Guadalupe local along the Pacific Coast Highway in Ventura Ca.

C44ACCTE 5841 leads an eastbound intermodal through Modesto Ca.

EMC SW1 SP 1000 is seen working at Oakland California in 1939. Otto Perry photo, from my collection.

Espee Tank. The waste water collection tank at the Union Pacific facility/Amtrak station in Dunsmuir, California is a lasting memory of the Southern Pacific Lines. Depicted is SP 6839 (SD45... (more)

NO TWO ALIKE!

So a GP15-1, GG20GE, GP38, SL-1RCL and SW1500 walk into a bar … er … yard. And besides the variety of models and builders, many of them also have intere... (more)