GP15Dash1 wrote:jmslakings wrote:SJVR doesn't switch Edison. Only Union Pacific and sometimes BNSF. When UP does switch Edison, they shunt backwards up the hill on the inbound track, No ABS signals facing them from yard to Edison. For this UP used the old Railroad Police bay window caboose. Of course that has all changed now.
That last sentence is intriguing...what's changed now?
In the past when UP has had to switch in Edison (what little there still is) the consist was usually made up of a few covered hopper's and some refers and a remote controlled GP-38. Since Edison is only about five miles out UP would shunt up the hill backwards with a caboose at the front end. As you can imagine going up hill at 15 mph is a slow daunting task. Both BNSF and UP would have to stop inbound traffic into Bakersfield until the crews could get off the main. I think the local crews had complained about it so much that UP finally replaced the GP-38 with two SD-40's. I saw the crew a few weeks ago going up to Edison at track speed with the locos at the front end(no caboose) Kern Jct as of right now is a bit of a mess. Union Pacific has pretty much rebuilt the yard, replacing all the switches and most of the yard track. UP is also building a new bypass track of sorts. They have taken one of the yard tracks and turned it into a main line track so UP trains will no longer have to wait for BNSF trains to get through Kern Jct.(Think of Colton Crossing minus the flyover) Of course all of this comes with the new CTC signals that are being installed. In the coming weeks I will see about getting some pictures up so you can all see our new Kern Jct. I'll even post some shot's of the new tank car facility that can load over 100 tank cars simultaneously.
