Western Railroad Discussion > Santa Fe, All The Way!

Back in the '70's and 80', the way to get from San Diego to LA was "Santa Fe All The Way"! The eastbound SDX [San Diego to San Bernardino] was stopped at Serra siding, in San Juan Capistrano, CA, in early '80, after spotting a lumber car, while it's "passengers" casually strolled about awaiting the trains departure. There are at least 30 "riders" visible in this photo. Before the border was seriously controlled, this was an EVERYDAY occurance on BOTH the San Diego to San Bernardino SDX, and, the San Diego to LA "Night Coast". This is just a small number of the actual riders on this train.
JB

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UNBELIEVEABLE!!!
I thought the INS checked the trains, they sure as Hell cause a traffic mess on the freeway with their checkpoints.
TAH

Back in 80s heard an Amtrak train tell a WB SDX train that they had more riders than the Amtrak did!

It was the same way out of El Paso. We were restricted to 10 mph until we passed the icehouse crossovers. This allowed many people to jump on our train. There were a few cases where we looked as bad as this photo.
This also happened at Elvas Tower to us. We got our train at Elvas and went up the west valley (Davis to Tehama)then Dunsmuir. When we got the train at Elvas I noticed we had a lot of riders. When we went through the Sacramento depot I saw 15 or 20 get off so I thought most of our problem was gone.
We started up the valley and I noticed the cops in Davis were watching our train real close. When we came through Williams there was a deputy sheriff and a city cop giving us a roll-by.
Next thing I noticed was a Deputy Sheriff was driving on the highway next to us and he was yelling over his loud speaker about some people riding our train. We tried to ignore him, because there wasn't much we could do if we stopped.
The plot thickens. When we went through Corning it looked like the entire Corning PD was at the main crossing rolling us by. They were waving so as to get our attention. As we came through Red Bluff we had at least 5 different RBPD units, 2 Sheriff units and 1 CHP unit give us a roll-by. So by this time the engineer and I decided we needed to do something. We called the dispatcher and informed him every cop in Northern California was after us. He told us they had been calling him because we had 50 or so illegals riding all over the train and they were concerned for their safety.
We were told to continue to Girvan siding and stop between switches where we would be met the the local cops. There were at least 20 car loads of enforcement people waiting for us when we got there. I got off and walked back to watch the fun. I have never seen so many people run so fast in so many different directions and the cops were every where. I don't know if they even caught anyone. The engineer and I died laughing at the fiasco.
Another day on the railroad

Maybe the future of Amtrak? ;-)

There were a bunch of "gondola pilots" that came up from Phoenix on the A&C and Santa Fe wasn't coming out to pick up the cars at Cadiz so they lived there for about 6 or 7 days, fortunately the water tank still had water in it back then.
If you've never seen an INS raid, it's an absolute scream to watch - folks just be runnin' every which way.


TCS - she's got a police bike.

Whats all this scrap iron doin in the dining car?

TopcoatSmith Wrote:
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> There were a bunch of "gondola pilots" that came
> up from Phoenix on the A&C and Santa Fe wasn't
> coming out to pick up the cars at Cadiz so they
> lived there for about 6 or 7 days, fortunately the
> water tank still had water in it back then.
> If you've never seen an INS raid, it's an absolute
> scream to watch - folks just be runnin' every
> which way.
>
>
> TCS - she's got a police bike.

I watched an INS raid on a westbound at Bakersfield once All of a sudden you see twenty guys scrambling out of gondolas Made for some good entertainment