It's a meet between the Sunset Limited and another passenger train. Does anyone have an 1898 Employee timetable for the LA Division? That might be able to show where this meet is supposed to take place and the number of the other train...?

I agree, it looks a lot like Garnet by the hills in the background, if this is looking north easterly, but I don't see the Garnet hill further down. Garnet was much shorter then and the switch further up the hill from the "Old Palm Springs" siding. So the "Garnet" hill, next to today's I-10 and then SP, now UP main, may be further down, and out of the shot. This certainly does look a lot like up where the old pot smugglers air strip used to be (before the wind turbines).

I also thought this might be further up at West Palm Springs, but it doesn't look like the whitewater wash area in the background. But, I also always have been of some notion, that I'd picked up somewhere, that this may have been shot by Edison in Arizona somewhere.

A lot of the SP Sunset Main from Beaumont to El Paso is amazingly similar from a scenic perspective, lots of desert, and far away hills. If Edison had been shooting toward the background of the San Jacinto's or San Bernardino range, we'd easily know.