How has the freight business been doing ? They don,t post any news on their main page.
Sorry I do not know. [:D]
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Originally posted by lechee
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Last I heard they were still digging out the collapsed tunnel, but hat was a while ago. I have no idea whether the original grade has reopened from Jacumba to Plaster City. I do remember there being some question about the structural condiditon of the wooden trestles, didnt one of them burn during the brush fires in 2003/2004?
I just moved to the SD area and asked about freight operations. I was told it had JUST re-opened. I’ll try to post a link to the thread.
Chad according to your post that freight service does not sound like its the thru-freight service continuous all the way thru to Plaster City in the Imperial Valley. It sounds more like local branch line services.
Lechee (and me) want to know if the old SD & AE mainline thru Carrizo Gorge has been reopened?
On 12 March, I traveled from SD to the Imperial Valley and saw a couple of UP Geeps heading up maybe a dozen or more ballast cars on the line west of Ocotillo, stopped while a skip loader was doing some work next to the track. On farther, I saw another UP Geep and a Green Geep on the Coyote Wells passing track, with no rolling stock there. This was at about 10 am or so.
After leaving the Blue Angels Air Show and heading west, I saw the two parked locomotives again at Coyote Wells but did not see any sign of the ballast train.
At least on the desert floor, there are a lot of weeds in the roadbed, since this has been a wet enough winter that the vegetation everywhere is quite green. (Good spring for desert wildflowers, for sure.)
A month or two ago, the San Diego Union ran an illustrated article describing the delivery of a box car from Oregon to a furniture factory in Tecate by way of the CG route up from the Imperial Valley via UP interchange, so the line is open. I have not, however, heard of regular freight service really ramping up.
I was refering to unclejoes’ post (3rd down) where he says to carrizo line is NOW opened.
Just look for your post in the following thread.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=1&TOPIC_ID=26809
I didn’t realize that the Union-Tribune kept the link in my post still up and running. The pictures were taken at division tunnel, which is where the route goes into Mexico about five miles east of Tecate.
Here is the original link:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20041231-9999-1m31train.html
Of course, a lot of people out here are interested in the resumption of the weekend excursions from Campo out to the Carizzo Gorge.
BTW, when at the California State Railroad Museum a few weeks ago, I noticed an SP poster promoting the “Cariso Gorge” hanging on the wall in their reproduction of a small station. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a repro copy available in the gift shop, or I would have picked one up.
When I was last on their website, the Mexican portion was closed due to a wildfire last summer. All of their excursions to Tecate had been cancelled until further notice.
It would be nice to take a ride from Jacumba to Plaster City on an excursion. We will see what happens this summer.
More information is available online at http://www.CarrizoGorgeRailway.com/ .