Diamonds Are Forever. Sitting forlorn in the foreground amongst a sea of weeds, one of the original Redondo Junction diamonds sees the passage of yet another passenger train, this one being Amtrak 4, the Southwest Chief, led by AMTK 201, as the train tackles the diamond's 20-year-old replacement, the Redondo Junction Flyover, at sunset. Opened on August 21, 2001, the Redondo Junction Flyover replaced a pair of diamonds located here where the Southern Pacific Railroad and Santa Fe Railway's busy mainlines converged. Controlled by an operator in a nearby interlocking tower, it was all too common for one train to have to wait for another as the decade of the 1990's began, particularly as Amtrak and Metrolink train traffic continued to rise and freight trains were getting up to a mile (or more) long traveling to and from the port at Long Beach. So much was the need to elevate the bottleneck of freight and passenger trains here, the flyover project was commissioned and completed in the summer of 2001. While this immediately allowed passenger and freight traffic to travel through the area with ease, it sadly meant the closing of the interlocking tower and the end of the two diamonds life here. Such was the same fate for the Santa Fe canteliver signals located here, which today continue to stand sentinel with their heads turned away from rail traffic. As for the diamonds, located just a stones throw away from where they once carried thousands of pounds of tonnage across their rails, today they await an uncertain future as it continues to watch change take place all around it in the local area.
