Western Railroad Discussion > A walk from the wye at Cima, UP LA&SL line

This past weekend, I was exploring the area around Cima in the Mojave Desert. Cima is on the (guess what?) Cima Subdivision of the UP line from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, and is about halfway between Yermo and Las Vegas. It is in an area that has seen mining activity in the past, though it is now in what is called the Eastern Mojave National Preserve. But on with the tale! I had time between other activities to try to determine the story behind a small railroad yard located north and east of the rest of “town” that I had run across twenty-five years ago. One notable thing I had found was a 1910 date nail in a tie, the oldest one I’ve yet seen. Let’s take a walk out that way and see what we might find this day.

Image 1) If you stand on the tail track of the wye at the top of the hill at Cima, you will find these old switch ties embedded in the cinder ballast. That is the first clue that there was more to Cima than there is today.

Image 2) Standing on top of the switch ties, looking toward the end of the tail track, you can see the trace of an old roadbed, now just cinder ballast on top of the sand, that curves off toward the east. Oh, and get a laugh out of that "bumper" there at the end of the tail track - a plastic traffic "cone" that couldn't stop a wayward bicycle.

Image 3) A quick look at the wye tail track shows the rail is pretty old – 1920 vintage to be exact.

(more coming)

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/11 22:24 by CimaScrambler.

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Image 4) Following the cinder ballast trail around the curve shows it crossed Cima Road at one point. The road is depressed where it crosses the old railway grade. If I rack my memory, I think I can remember seeing rails in Cima Road the first time I was through here in 1975, though I’m not entirely certain I can trust that memory.

Image 5) Across Cima Road, the cinder ballast trail continues curving toward the east. The grade it lays on starts to widen out into a broad area that was leveled into the sloping desert alluvium. If you look toward the right distance you can see a white pile of rock – we’ll be looking at that in a minute.

Image 6) Once the trail straightens out along a bearing roughly east-northeast, it becomes apparent someone was plowing up the cinders at one time. I’m thinking they were after the ties, since there aren’t any to be seen through here. Though they may have been after the cinders too, since they are not too heavily mixed in with the sandy alluvial desert soil.

(still more coming)

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/11 22:10 by CimaScrambler.

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Image 7) Keep walking and the plowing stops, revealing the parallel trench marks where ties were pulled out of the ground. That one tie still in the cinders in this photo is about the only tie remaining in the area.

Image 8) About a hundred fifty yards beyond Cima Road we start to come to various bits of railroad car, like this brake hose, laying about in the cinders or in the sandy soil. Someone did some maintenance here at one time, or so it seems.

Image 9) This bit of air hose looks like a snake from a distance, though I’ll bet it hasn’t moved in a few decades.

(still more coming . . .)

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/11 22:19 by CimaScrambler.

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Image 10) A couple odd bits of metal. There are also some rubber truck ride control bushings I posted a photo of last night asking what they might have been (see: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2566260 )

Image 11) Eventually the cinder trail widens out into what looks like a broad work area that had two tracks running down the center of it. To either side of the tracks, the cinders are packed down firmly and deeply into the sand, making a very firm surface. I’m thinking that was for heavy mining trucks that brought material to load into rail cars here. The cinders where the track was are all hummocky where the ties were removed.

Image 12) There are a couple of piles of quarried marble rock dumped beside the “tracks”. Perhaps that is one thing that was loaded here. The radio mast in the picture is the railroad communications tower back by the Cima wye.

(and the last one is next)

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/11 22:22 by CimaScrambler.

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Image 13) All the way across the place, there was only one tie remaining embedded in the cinders. Here is where a lot of the rest of them went – into a big pile that was then burned. This pile had not been burned in 1986, and is where I found that 1910 date nail embedded in one of the ties. I suppose you could go through the charcoal here with a metal detector and perhaps come up with another one. You can see were the tracks were to the right of the charcoal pile, and how wide was the smooth packed cinder apron on this side of the tracks (equally wide on the other side too).

Image 14. At the far end of the area, the cinders end at a couple of dirt piles that must have been “bumpers” at the end of the two tracks. Beside the southern pile there is a rail set on end into the ground that may have been one support for a gate at one time. It has this 1953 date rolled into its web. Someone was using this place after that date, apparently.

From the reading I’ve been doing since I got back, I’m thinking this was a loadout for the Aiken Cinder Mine, located in the Baker Volcanic Field perhaps twenty miles to the west-northwest. (see: http://www.backroadswest.com/MonthTrips/AikenMine.htm ). If what I’ve been reading is correct, that cinder mine supplied a lot of the aggregate used to make the road paving material used on the streets of Las Vegas up into the 1960s and perhaps the 1970s. The mine closed in 1990, and it looks like they stopped shipping the material by rail well before that. There were no rails in the loadout there at Cima in 1986 when I last walked out into the area.

The marble rock that is laying out there? There are a number of marble deposits in the area, many of which were prospected up through the middle of the last century. I could have come from any of them, I suppose.

So there you have it, a bit of history on the top of Cima Hill on UP’s LA&SL line. I’ve not seen anything on that facility in any of the books on the line I have read. It is always fun to discover something like that and try to figure out its tale.

Be safe out there –

- Kit

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/11 07:02 by CimaScrambler.

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I enjoyed the virtual field trip Kit. Thanks for being the guide!

Ryan Wilkerson
Fair Oaks, CA

In the early 1960's, a unit train was being loaded at Cima with iron ore which was exported thru Long Beach. The iron ore was really fine iron filings which were extracted from the sand by a magnetic process. This operation lasted only a few years.
Occasionally, I see one of the short UP ore cars which were assigned to this trade, in some other service.

TIOGA PASS

Great work!

That 1910 date nail is significant - hell - this portion of the line was completed around 1904, IIRC....

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

aronco Wrote:
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> In the early 1960's, a unit train was being loaded
> at Cima with iron ore which was exported thru Long
> Beach. The iron ore was really fine iron filings
> which were extracted from the sand by a magnetic
> process. This operation lasted only a few years.
> Occasionally, I see one of the short UP ore cars
> which were assigned to this trade, in some other
> service.
>
> TIOGA PASS

Interesting! I never would have guess that from what I was seeing out there.

but after doing a google search I found this
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2098359
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,766990
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1470353
and an aerial view
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=35.23910,-115.50083&z=16&t=H&marker0=36.76888%2C-118.29500%2C36.76889\%2C%20-118.295

So the facility was used for iron ore from Tecopa in the early 1970s. But what about before that? The 1910 date nail tells me it may have a history far older - unless, of course, that date nail came from a tie removed from the main line at some point. Still a mystery!

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/11 16:42 by CimaScrambler.

Kit, Great photo essay!!
The "odd bits of metal", Image 10.
A rail anchor on the left, the hooked end clips onto the base of
the rail and the lip on the left end catches the other side
of the base. The anchor is placed against the side of the ties
to prevent longitudinal movement of the rail.
The piece on the right looks like part of the lock mechanism
of a 'ground throw' switch stand!
The two hoses, Images 8 and 9, are of course part of the brake system,
the first is the regular car end hose with a glad hand. One hint, this
section of rubber hose usually has the quarter and year of manufacture
embossed on the hose, ie. 1Q-11, 2Q-11. These hoses had a 9 year
lifespan from time of manufacture to required replacement date.
This would provide a unique Time reference when the hose was left on this site!
The second hose is an 'armored' hose, no longer legal, and is used as part
of the 'Sliding Draft Gear' on a cushioned underframe car!
Mike



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/11 01:01 by 2720.

2720 Wrote:
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> The piece on the right looks like part of the lock
> mechanism
> of a 'ground throw' switch stand!

That piece is actually part of a very old, 2 part rail anchor system. An anchor, somewhat like the one pictured, would be placed at the base of the rail, then the channel like part of the piece pictured, would be slid onto the base of the rail, in between the anchor and the rail. The flat part seen on the piece, is there so you can tap the piece in, with a sledge hammer, like a wedge, thus making a firm connection, from rail to tie. I forget where I was working at, I believe it was up in New York, on either the Ithaca or Corning Secondary, we encountered this style of anchor, I tried to keep one set of them, but I believe it got lost in our flat car move to another location.

GREAT photos and narrative Kit!! You sure covered quite a bit of history there. Thanks for the learning experience.

Kent in Carmel Valley

im_trainman Wrote:
> That piece is actually part of a very old, 2 part
> rail anchor system. An anchor, somewhat like the
> one pictured, would be placed at the base of the
> rail, then the channel like part of the piece
> pictured, would be slid onto the base of the rail,
> in between the anchor and the rail. The flat part
> seen on the piece, is there so you can tap the
> piece in, with a sledge hammer, like a wedge, thus
> making a firm connection, from rail to tie. I
> forget where I was working at, I believe it was up
> in New York, on either the Ithaca or Corning
> Secondary, we encountered this style of anchor, I
> tried to keep one set of them, but I believe it
> got lost in our flat car move to another location.

Thanks for the correction! I was familiar with another
type of two piece anchor, but not this one!
Mike