I was last in the Douglas, AZ area about 10 years ago, and the ex-SP line there was in sad shape. It looked like it was no longer in use; is it still in service?
An article in today’s [u]LA Times[/i] about the Minutemen (landowners in southern Arizona lending eyes and ears to assist the US Border Patrol) had several photos, of both the Minutemen and the folks who wanted to sneak across the border; all of these photos showed a railroad track in the background.
Most of the pictures were probably the line in Mexico that parallels the border, but the one that was in Arizona also shows a track…according to the 1999 Professional RR atlas this line is no longer in service
Now San Pedro and Southwestern. Along with the Arizona Eastern, this is all that is left of the EPSW (El Paso Southwestern) which was built by copper intrests about 1900 to eliminate themselves from reliance on the SP. SP ended up buying the EPSW and ran paired track (ala Nevada) for many years before trearing it up about 30 years ago. I’ve got the dates and stuff, but can’t locate them at the moment.
Thanks. I knew about the San Pedro & Southwestern…they ran excursions out of Benson down to Fairbank for a while. Never got to ride it.
But the track near Douglas looked like it was out of service…
It is. There is a team track on the US-Mexico boarder the name of which I can’t remember that is just a few miles West of Douglas that is the end of operations. They transload shipments out of Mexico there instead of interchanging at Douglas is how I understand things.
Hey, good info there, thanks!
I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, and remember seeing a switcher in Douglas. This was back in the mid 80’s. It was an SP switcher.
Also was fun to follow the line up through (or around) Bisbee, then up to Benson, where it hooked up with the SP mainline.
Thirty odd years ago, there was still a two story depot standing, albeit in sad shape, in Rodeo, AZ. The rails were already gone east of Douglas by 1973, I know that for sure and the depot at Rodeo was gone three years ago when I last passed through the area.
You can still see signal bases all along the way along Route 80 (?).
My uncle was a civilian worker at Ft. Huachucha for years, now retired.
States Rail was bought by Rail America, which is bad. States Rail’s website had more information about the San Joaquin Valley Railroad than does Rai America’s website.