Southern Pacific built a new yard in the early 70s near Bloomington to relieve congestion in its old LA Taylor Yard and better serve the new Palmdale Colton Cut-off. The new yard was six miles long and covered 560 acres. The new hump yard was computer controlled and was supposed to be able to classify six to eight cars a minute. There was a 6% grade from the hump down into the ladder tracks that eventually split into 48 classification tracks.

On February 14, 1974 I took off for Colton with my brother and a friend of his from Lancaster. I had just taken the submarine through overhaul in Bremerton and had three hardhats. With the hardhats I thought we could walk through the new Southern Pacific Bloomington Yard (West Colton) without being hassled. The yard was still under construction, so we had no problem walking all over the yard as long as we kept our cameras out of sight. The following pictures are some of the treasures we captured that day.
The Camera Car
New Hump Power
Yard Slug
Engine Ready Track
Yard Tower
Old Colton

Gallery