Nostalgia & History > Borax on the BNSF Harbor Subdivision, 2001

I've been going back through the large number of photos I took of operations on the BNSF Harbor Subdivision during the last year before through traffic was diverted to the Alameda Trench in April 2002. In this image, an interesting mixture of power leads a unit train of borax from Boron, in the Mojave Desert, to the borax bulk loader on Mormon Island near Pier A Yard in the Port of Los Angeles. The location is El Nido Park, and the power is just about right above the old location where the Pacific Electric Redondo via Gardena line crossed under the old Santa Fe tracks. One reference I have says that PE line was removed in 1944, though the bridge may have lasted a while longer.

I plan to keep going through this bunch of images in the next while and may have a few more that have not seen the light of day before to share. Stay tuned.

- Kit

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

---

Is there still any mining at Boron?

They still run a local from Barstow to Borax (Boron) ever day. MP 783.
Dennis

The PE overpass bridge was in place until at least the sixties as I walked over it many times as a kid. When they removed it they must have used flatcars as at one time it was sitting in one piece near the ALCOA sign a mile and a half RR west. Borax was still coming down to the harbor when I retired in '09 occasionally still in unit trains but normally in cuts of ten or twenty cars on the regular manifest MBARWAT. Attached is a shot I took of a unit Borax train climbing Monoco Hill in Lawndale, CA with an unusual set of five GP50's a couple of miles behind your shot in May '82.
JB



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/12 08:00 by 3rdswitch.

---

There's about 40 more years of Borax to be mined at Boron. Still a major industry with around 700 employees.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Nice shot, JB. Those GP50s make the train look mighty beefy, and I love those silver trucks.

Here's another Borax movement, at Lawndale in January 2002. Note the SD70MAC in Grinstein paint third out in the consist.

Kit

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/12 23:17 by CimaScrambler.

---

I think the PE bridge was there until the late 1970's.

If anyone has a picture of the PE bridge, I sure would like to see it.

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

Man those unit borax trains were cool. I recall seeing them over the years on the San Diego Subdivision, but they never really seemed to be consistent over the years.

Posted from iPhone