There was a recent discussion on another thread about the San Diego & Arizona Eastern, so here's a photo I took FORTY YEARS AGO, on June 08, 1982, when a friend of mine and I made our way to Campo, CA. At that time Kyle Railways was operating the former Southern Pacific subsidiary. There was a bridge over the Tia Juana river in Tijuana that was washed out and the Mexicans were taking their time in repairing it. Consequently, Kyle was having the crews go on duty at Campo and one day they would make a round trip to Tijuana and the next day they would make a round trip to Plaster City. After making a few phone calls to learn of this, we showed up at Campo on the day they were going to Plaster City and we managed to find a co-operative crew who allowed us to ride. We were able to ride through Carriso Gorge twice in one day! Here's our train making its way across a series of small trestles that have been nicknamed the "seven sisters". The SD&AE was known as "the impossible railroad" and the most agonizingly difficult challenge for the construction engineers was the eleven mile segment through Carrizo Gorge, which included 17 tunnels, totaling 13,385 feet in length.

Here's a really good photo by Jarod Black showing some of the line in the Gorge, as seen from an overlook in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park:

[i.ibb.co]

This line is now out-of-service and there have been some bridge fires and collapsed tunnels over the years. It's anyone's guess as to whether trains will ever run here again. It's going to require a lot of money to re-open the line and the numbers crunch now in about the same manner as when John D. Spreckles and Espee were trying to squeeze a profit out of the operation. The distance from El Centro to San Diego is short enough that containers and truck trailers can economically be drayed on Interstate 8. BNSF has similarly been serving the San Diego market by draying containers and truck trailers from San Bernardino to San Diego. For a city as large as it is, San Diego does not generate and consume all that much rail freight traffic. Perhaps a bi-national project could restore the line as it is the only rail link that connects Tijuana and Tecate with the rest of the Mexican rail system at Mexicali. All of those cities have grown substantially over the last few decades.