Nostalgia & History > SP X8057 West, Around the West Colton Balloon, Summer, 1992

For those not familiar, At the SP West Colton Yard, westbound trains leave the yard in an eastbound direction , then use the balloon track to proceed
west to City of Industry, or LA.  

Here is SP GE 8057 on the point of a westbound coming off the balloon and notching up to proceed out on the mainline past the yard.

Regards, Jim Evans

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Very cool.  I wonder if anyone has ever modeled that yard and balloon track.

Yes cool video, all these years I knew about that balloon track, but had no idea that All WB left the yard eastbound and turned on that track, Thanks for that!

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

What a way to plan a new yard.  Tie up your double-track mainline for every wb leaving a yard.

coach Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What a way to plan a new yard.  Tie up your
> double-track mainline for every wb leaving a yard.

That's among the reasons that it cratered upon opening and the trains that were supposed to bypass LA via the cutoff were going through LA to bypass the bypass route that was full of parked trains. Of course, the train order stations at Lang and Ravenna had been closed, since they would not be needed any more, making handling the traffic ...mmmm.interesting. But hey, they rigged up a buzzer on the dispatcher phone that would alert us to a train gong by those stations, even if there was nothing we could do about it.

TAW