# Tehachapi Loop



## BNSF Fan

A pic, not mine, of the "Loop". Fascinating. I live close enough for a day trip and I'm gonna have to get there this spring for some watching and picture taking.


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## kursplat

follow the line north out of town with google maps in satellite view sometime. lot's of great tunnels and switch backs :thumbsup:


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## JChatary

Man...I haven't been out there in YEARS. I remember a monument with a cross at the top of the hill in the middle of the loop in memory of those who died during a train wreck in San Bernardino County...coming down the Cajon Pass. I always thought it was unusual to place that specific monument in Tehachapi...considering it's about 100 miles away from where the accident occured.

http://www.rgusrail.com/album/catehachapi/tehachapi_09.jpg


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## concretepumper

Cool pic dude! I used to live near Barstow and we rode ATVs in Tehachapi sometimes. Beautiful part of the Mojave Desert. Funny about the Monument for the Cajon Pass wreck. I didn't know that.


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## JChatary

I've spent the day out there in both Spring and Winter...if I still had my snow pics, I'd post them...but snow pics are nothing you can't find on google, I'm sure.

The creepiest memory I have of train-watching up there was a night we planned on camping up there. It just got too cold, so we decided to rent a motel room (me and 2 other buddies) at the Santa Fe Motel (talk about a roach-motel hole-in-the-wall). When we walked up and asked about renting the room, the guy at the desk/window actually asked us this...

"For the night or by the hour?"

We were absolutely STUNNED and unable to respond in any other way except to say "umm...for the night" This was about 20 years ago and we still laugh about it to this day!


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## concretepumper

JChatary said:


> I've spent the day out there in both Spring and Winter...if I still had my snow pics, I'd post them...but snow pics are nothing you can't find on google, I'm sure.
> 
> The creepiest memory I have of train-watching up there was a night we planned on camping up there. It just got too cold, so we decided to rent a motel room (me and 2 other buddies) at the Santa Fe Motel (talk about a roach-motel hole-in-the-wall). When we walked up and asked about renting the room, the guy at the desk/window actually asked us this...
> 
> "For the night or by the hour?"
> 
> We were absolutely STUNNED and unable to respond in any other way except to say "umm...for the night" This was about 20 years ago and we still laugh about it to this day!



Hahaha...... Yea the best I saw was the Calico Mountains covered in snow back in 2003. Doesn't happen often in the Desert. 

Was your hotel in Barstow or Victorville? Yea the Mojave can get cold. I camp out there but in a Trailer.


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## JChatary

The motel was in the town of Tehachapi.

I do a bunch of camping now...my new thing is camping & overlanding in my Jeep. We have a pretty cool group of friends who all enjoy going out to remote parts of the desert and camping & exploring. Nothing crazy or extreme like crawling over boulders or anything like that. We mostly stay on graded trails & dirt roads specifically meant for 4 wheel drive travel. I'm lucky that my girlfriend likes it almost as much as I do!


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## norgale

Good thing to stay on the trails. If anything went wrong at least you could be rescued. I once went into an area known as the Corbett area which is a huge piece of realestate just West of Riviera Beach ,Fl. on the East coast. Got to driving around on the trails and then off the trails in a car no less and got lost. The area is just plain flat and low scrub brush with a few cypress and pine trees here and there. I could see traffic on the Beeline Highway that went out to Pratt and Whitney Aircraft but there was a large marshy area between me and the road that I couldn't get through in the car,a 70 Pontiac sedan. I drove around in circles for about an hour until I found a trail that eventually took me back to the gravel road and out to the highway. To see the way out and not be able to get to it was scary at the least and I never did anything like that again. My tires were slashed in a million places by the saw grass that I was driving around in but they never went flat. Used those tires for a long time after that and never had a problem. Lucky I guess. Pete


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## tjcruiser

Dumb question on my part ... What is "saw grass"? Can it actually cut rubber?


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## norgale

Saw grass is like hay. It grows pretty tall like about 3 to 4 feet eventually and the edges of the blades of grass are all serrated like a saw. They are very sharp and if you run through it with shorts on it will slice and dice you with tiny scratches and you'll be a bloody mess in no time. Does the same to tires. The Everglades and much of South Florida is covered with the stuff although you won't find it in developed areas. Strickly out in the wild stuff. Burns like crazy too. When you hear about fires burning out of control in the Glades, that's what is burning. Very fast and furious too. pete


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## tjcruiser

Thanks, Pete.

Here in RI, we have short, brown grass ... that won't grow, no matter how much I water it, and no matter how much money I throw at it! 

Cheers,

TJ


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## norgale

Same here TJ. People around here spend fortunes for a nice green lawn and then the bugs eat it up. I just let the weeds gro and keep them mowed so I have green grass with no maintenance. If the weeds die from lack of water then they grow back as soon as the rain starts. Good plan I think. Water is very expensive down here. Pete


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