Southern California's Tehachapi Mountains are perhaps best known for the mountain railroad spectacle which takes place in these fabled hills on a daily basis. The countless curves and tremendous gain in elevation on its western slope still provide the very definition of mountain railroading in North America. What's just as impressive was that all of this was hammered into being back in the 1870s with hand tools, blasting powder, and of course hard labor under direction of William Hood of the Southern Pacific railroad. While Tehachapi's serpentine curves, series of tunnels, and daunting grades are something to behold trackside, the seasoned crews who work the mountain are constantly at odds with what makes Tehachapi so irresistible. Cast in a late afternoon's glow a westbound BNSF double stack train slips through 'downtown' Caliente, negotiating the lower leg of the Caliente horseshoe and the horseshoe curve itself. Lining the upper leg of the horseshoe, in the foreground, the remains of a UP MWCRV derailment line the Mojave Subdivision just out of tunnel 1's west portal.
