Deja Vu in the Desert?
Warbonnets still roam the Mojave Desert
In my three separate trips to southern California since
early 2012, I've focused heavily on visiting and photographing today’s BNSF Railway
operated Needles Subdivision, a busy section of transcontinental railroad
connecting California’s coastal ports to the Midwestern industries of Chicago.
Intermodal traffic dominates this scenic line, which slices through the Mojave
Desert between Barstow and Needles. While I've heard several different
estimates on projected daily train count, all of my visits to this busy railroad
have produced significant levels of rail congestion, and consistent parades of
westbound and eastbound trains.
While the double track mainline between Barstow and
Needles has endless scenic photo opportunities, I’m also very partial to BNSF
and Union Pacific lines west of Barstow, especially in the direction of Mojave
proper and continuing west toward the former Southern Pacific Tehachapi Pass, a
route deserving of its own story and photo essay.
The original Santa Fe yard and terminal of Barstow has
always served as a good centralized point of interest in providing the most
trains and variety. Several road locals originate here and the never-ending
volume of inbound and outbound trains is fascinating to watch. This is also one
of the best locations in the Mojave Desert (from my personal observations) to
still watch several decently-painted original ATSF ‘Warbonnets’ lead road
locals across the desert.
In a January 2012 visit to Barstow, I had my first, true
ATSF Warbonnet encounter in the form of the railroad’s weekday Boron local, a
road local that delivers covered hoppers to a Borax facility in Boron, Calif. west
of Barstow. The roughly 80-mile round trip disembarks from Barstow on weekdays,
delivering inbound cars to the Rio Tinto Borax Mine and picking up outbounds
for customer distribution. On a mild and sunny day in January, rail
photographer Chris Starnes and I intercepted the Boron job while it was
switching out cars on the ‘Boron Spur’, which diverts away from the BNSF Mojave
Subdivision to gain access to the facility. In true Santa Fe fashion, former
ATSF GP60M No. 160 was doing the honors on this specific day, leading a trio of
freshly rebuilt BNSF SD40-2R’s. The train left the facility with a heavy train
in tow, putting on quite an impressive audio show to maintain a track speed of
50 MPH.
Fast forwarding over two and a half years in the June of
2014, I was once again in the center of the railroad’s busy Barstow terminal.
Approximately two years had passed since my last visit to the area and I was
anticipating an entire revamping of the railroad’s selection of motive power
for road locals. As Class I’s work all across the nation to repaint locomotives
into current corporate logos and schemes, I was expecting the iconic Santa Fe’s
of 2012 to be even more endangered.
In a sea of vibrant orange ‘swoosh’ painted BNSF widecabs
and rebuilt SD40-2R’s during my first re-encounter in 2014, I was even more
convinced that the days of Warbonnet-led road locals were a thing of the past…
Continuing east toward Ludlow to re-join access to Historic Route 66, a
headlight on the horizon indicated we were on path to intercept a westbound.
Expecting to encounter another L.A. bound container train, we diverted away
from Route 66 onto a dusty pathway near Ash Hill.
As the train approached, the distinctive red nose of a
former ATSF Warbonnet became apparent. On closer observation, a magnified
telephoto perspective revealed a westbound light engine move. This was
obviously the Cadiz local returning light to Barstow from the Arizona &
California Railroad interchange near Amboy, California in the center of the
Mojave Desert. The local is notorious for representing unique power lashups,
but I was anticipating that even the Cadiz job had fallen victim to the ever
increasing BNSF Railway corporate image.
On this extremely hot evening in June, I was once again fortunate to document a road local with classic power. The five-unit light move featured four Santa Fe locomotives; three of which were iconic red and silver ‘warbonnets’ while the fourth was the blue and silver Santa Fe inspired scheme. The leader, BNSF B40-8W No. 558 had received a BNSF applied patch job, separating it from the few remaining (and clean) traditional warbonnets. The trailing locomotive in the light power consist featured a traditional warbonnet, BNSF B40-8W No. 543. With a couple of modern patches/modifications, the aging four-axle B40-8W still proudly represented the predecessor carrier, returning west to Barstow on original Santa Fe rails in June 2014.
