The line was for practical purposes shut down from Mojave to Bakersfield. I caught MOW crews at Mojave, Walong, Woodford, Caliente (and it was) and also north between Caliente and Bakersfield. They were clearly doing track work, but not a single train came through the line from about 11am till around 4ish when I left. No idea when the line reopened. A guy said they wer eputting in firebreaks, but that's not what it looked like though there had been a few fires. Other bizarre things. I saw a single H-Mac sitting in a siding at Tehachapi with a handful of loaded doublestacks and assorted other cars. And when I say sitting, I don't mean with these cars as a train, I mean randomly sitting there running (they are loud) with the cars divided into to sidings. There was an SD-60M with her front truck on the ground at mojave. While eating breakfest at the Dennys across the way I watched them try to yank it back on to the tracks using 2 other SD-60Ms and a tunnelmotor. They didn't appear to be having much luck, but when I came back through around 4-5 the engines were gone. Finally, the MOW people at Mojave were going nuts with a track project. It seemed like there were hundreds around with all sorts of equipment. when I came back in the afternoon, the had what appeared to be new yard rails laid, and a lot of land cleared. Interesting.
I believe what you may have seen was caused by a rail replacement project that has been ongoing for the past few months. The rail crew works for a week or two, then takes a week or two off. They have been replacing rail all the way over the hill recently. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten up there recently, but do have a contact that works MOW on the hill, and I pick his brain from time to time to find out what's happening.
YoHo, track repairs have been going on all week, I'm down here visiting and have been getting "skunked" on a regular basis. Monday I went down to Caliente and caught one heading up. I went to Bealville to get a few pics and heard another one coming up. I went up to the loop to catch them there and was treated to a good hour and a half of big time railroading. Then A UP (3 units with 17 mixed) pulled out of Walong and derailed in tunnel 10!! The loop was shut down Tuesday and trains were running again today. Never been at the scene of a derailment before! BTW there was a picture in the B-field paper of the derailment. Gonna try my luck again tomorrow afternoon.
