Tehachapi question

Was curious as to how many trains the UP runs over the Loop in a 24 hour period. Was also wondering what percentage of those UP trains take the Palmdale cutoff to Colton, vs the Saugus line directly in to the LA area? Thanks!

Trains over the loop can very but I have found they run them in groups of 2-5 trains in a direction with the distance between trains about 15 minutes. Trains over the loop are about 40/60 UP/BNSF. Most of the UP trains take the Palmdale cutoff because the old Saugus line is now the Metrolink Valley Sub and is dedicated to the 10 Metrolink trains daily. I think they run about 3 freights a day on it but I don't know the times. They run about 1-2 trains per hour on the Mojave division the runs through Lancaster (that I can hear anyway) but I don't know if they are coming or going on the old Saugus line or the Palmdale cut-off.

Chris

Thanks for the info! The reason I was aking was that I was reading a recent article in one of the train mags (I think it was railfan and railroad) about the seperate BNSF and UP lines north of Bakersfield and they mentioned that the UP sent around 25 trains a day over that stretch. I thought the Palmdale cutoff only saw around 12 trains a day, so figured there must have been a lot of traffic joining that line off the Saugus line. But if the Saugus line is only seeing a few trains a day, then either the article is overstating the UP train counts on that line or I have the Palmdale cutoff figures underestimated. I was out at Cajon a couple years back and remember that line being pretty quiet, and some local fans at that time metioned there was only a dozen or so trains a day. Hmm....

I think they underestimated especially since most railfans don't care what happens after dark.

I think the 25 is a good estimate on the traffic on the palmdale line.

Chris

Most of the freight action on the Saugas Line is after dark. The reason being that Metrolink runs a lot of their traffic during the day.