TRAINS / USA / CAJON & TEHACHAPI PASSES
TRAINS / USA / CAJON & TEHACHAPI PASSES |
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| Home > Trains > USA > Cajon & Tehachapi passes |
Cajon & Tehachapi passesTwo of the most famous passes in Northern America is the Cajon and Tehachapi passes. You can see my pictures here: BNSF trains and Union Pacific trains. The location of the passes? The Cajon pass is in the San Gabriel Mountains outside Los Angeles and the Tehachapi pass is in the Tehachapi Mountains between the Mojave Desert and San Joaqiun Valley. This means that alle trains coming trough the Mojave Desert from Arizona or Nevada have to negotiate one of these to passes. On my trip through Arizona in spring 1999 I talked with an employee at BNSF, and he gave me a kind of timetable covering the old Santa Fe network as a souvenir. In the timetable, dated 1995, is maps of all subdivisions of the Santa Fe Railroad. And below you can see the profile of the Cajon and Mojave subdivisions. |
Cajon pass |
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| Cajon Subdivision and Cajon pass. The height of the Cajon pass is 3800 feet = 1160 m. The average gradient on the San Bernadino side is 2600 feet / 22 miles = 792 m / 35400 m = 2,2%. |
Tehachapi pass |
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| Mojave Subdivision and the Tehachapi pass. The height of the Tehachapi pass is 4050 feet = 1235 m. The average gradient on the Bakersfield side is 2800 feet / 27 miles = 850 m / 43400 m = 1,9%. |
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| An uphill train in the Tehachapi loop |
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| An uphill train in the Tehachapi loop |
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| An uphill train in the Tehachapi loop |
