photography

Santa Fe FP45 Leads an Eastward Intermodal Freight

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Mojave, California, June 1992.

Santa Fe FP45 near Mojave Calif in 1992
Santa Fe EMD-built FP45 number 98 eastbound near Mojave, California. I exposed this on Kodachrome 25 using my Nikon F3T with an f4.0 200mm lens positioned on a Bogan 3021 tripod with ball head.

In the early 1990s, I made several productive trips to the California Tehachapis. Southern Pacific owned and operated the line over the mountain, while Santa Fe operated by virtue of trackage rights.

Yet at that time, Santa Fe ran about three times the number of trains as SP. On this morning, T.S. Hoover and I were set-up on the east slope of the mountain. While catching a Santa Fe FP45 in the ‘Super Fleet-Warbonnet’ livery leading was certainly a coup, it wasn’t especially unusual.

Dry desert air and clear skies were nearly ideal conditions for Kodachrome 25 film. This was one of many choice chromes exposed that day. I wish I could turn back the clock!

The locomotive survives at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, California. I made some more recent photographs of it on visit in June 2008.

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