At the west end of San Bernardino County, Calif. lies the town of Ontario. About a mile north of I-10, Vineyard Ave. encounters a MetroLink crossing.
QUESTION: Is this rail line the old Santa Fe “passenger main” linking the cities of San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga, Azusa, and Pasadena?
Go a little bit further north on Vineyard Ave. and you’ll reach the intersection with Foothills Blvd. From this intersection go about a half mile west on Foothills and the road slips under a railroad bridge. The cement retaining walls that anchor this structure were poured to accomodate two spans thereby supporting a double track operation; but, alas, only one single span is in place.
QUESTION: Whose railroad is (was) this? Might it have been part of the now abandoned Pacific Electric Railway system linking San Bernardino with downtown Los Angeles?
The first tracks you encounter on Vinyard were the Santa Fe Pasedena sub. Metrolink now owns the track from San Bernadino but does not go to Pasedena. They built a connector between the old Pasedena sub and the SP main at Basset (I think). Then they run down the State street line to LAUPT. West of that connector the Pasedena has been removed includeing the bridge over the eastbound lanes of the 210 where the track ran down the middle of the freeway.
The other tracks I’m not sure about, but I belive this was a SP branch to San Dimas from Colton that roughly paralleled the Pasedena sub to the north on the east end and south on the west end. The line turned from east to a southeast direction from Baseline past Vinyard and tward the Arrow highway.The PE is before my time so I don’t know if it’s a former PE line or not. Chances are it was.
I checked it out and it appears to be originaly a PE line. And was also a through route to LA.
I found this map but not what date it was.
http://www.erha.org/pesystem.htm
It’s part of PE’s LA Basin rat’s maze and a back door into Fontana.