The Tehachapi Loop

Photo: B. Perry

N 35° 12’ 3”,  W 118°32’ 13”

As I waited at a roadside overlook for a train to enter the enormous loop of railroad track known the Tehachapi Loop, I realized I’ve always been a railroad nerd.  It started, I suppose, with the HO-scale train set my brothers and I built in the 1960’s.  At first, it was only two parallel ovals with a couple of switches on a piece of plywood. We would spend hours and hours in the cold garage watching our little trains go around in circles.  We learned that if we made the trains too long, they would derail on the turns – probably because the curves were too tight.  Over the years, my older brother expanded the track layout to include sidings, a switching station, and a reversing S-curve while I worked on the landscaping by adding a town, a red-rock canyon with a trestle, and even some animation (I vaguely remember a cow trying to cross the tracks).  Dad sold the whole thing in the 70’s without telling me (but I’m not bitter!)  Since then, I’ve relied on the San Diego Model Railroad Museum for the occasional fix.  Their ten-foot-high model of the Carrizo Gorge and Goat Canyon Trestle is a wonder to behold.   But I digress…

The Tehachapi Loop on Google Earth

I've wanted to see the Tehachapi Loop for some time.  It’s located just west of the Tehachapi Pass in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles.  As California grew in the late 1800’s, there was an urgent need for a railroad between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  However, the mountains that surround the L.A. basin and the San Joaquin Valley posed a formidable obstacle to the railroad builders.  Trains can only climb a maximum 2.2% grade.  That is, a train can climb 2.2 feet in 100 feet or 110 feet in a mile.    The Southern Pacific Railroad’s proposed route to Los Angeles went through the San Joaquin Valley, east over the Tehachapi  Pass, across the Mohave Desert, south through the Cajon Pass between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains, and west to L.A.  But there was a problem: the climb to the Tehachapi Pass was too steep.  Chief Engineer William Hood solved the problem by designing an enormous loop of track that would raise a train sufficiently to make the final climb over the summit.  Construction on the 28 mile stretch of track from the valley floor to the desert began in 1874.  3000 Chinese laborers cut through the solid and decomposed granite of the Tehachapi Mountains with picks, shovels and blasting powder.  The line was completed in two years’ time.  On Sept. 5, 1876, Charlie Crocker of the Southern Pacific Railroad drove a (second) golden spike at Palmdale uniting California’s north and south.

A plaque overlooking the loop
commemorates its dedication as a
California Historical Landmark
Photo: B. Perry 

The Tehachapi Loop was considered one of the great railroad engineering feats of its day and it still is.  Remarkably, it has not been altered substantially from then until now, testifying to the genius of the original design.  Today, as many as 40 freight trains pass through the Tehachapi Loop daily.  Rail fans from around the world stop at the overlook on Woodford-Tehachapi Road about three miles east of Keene.  Two commemorative plaques mark the spot as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and California Historical Landmark #508.  On a recent early spring day, the hills surrounding the loop were green from the rain we’d had a week earlier.  The ranch that occupies the center of the loop was quiet and bucolic.  A small hill sits near the center of the loop with a large cross on its top in memory of two railroad workers who were killed in a derailment in 1989.  The Chinese workers who built the loop could never have imagined the highway just to the north where thousands of cars a day cruise up and down the pass as if it was nothing.  I could hear the train coming from miles away as it climbed the grade out of the valley.  Soon, it emerged from the tunnel and made the long, slow turn to the left around the 4000 foot loop.  In less than a minute, it crossed over itself at the tunnel.  The train’s horn blared as it passed in front of me and continued around the bend headed for the summit.  A few minutes later, the end of the train did the same.

Back at home, I posted a picture of the train on the loop on Facebook.  My brother commented that it must be real because if it was HO, it would have derailed by then.  I assume he was drawing on our experience in the garage with the tight corners of our train set.  Interestingly, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum has a very realistic replica of the Tehachapi Line, including the Loop, built by the La Mesa Model Railroad Club.  I recently watched the little trains make the loop just like the real ones do and – I’m pleased to report, Steve - no derailments. 

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