LunarLight Photography BNSF Harbor Sub Index Page

End of Through Operations

Planning for a fast, direct route from the harbor to downtown Los Angeles was begun in the 1980s, when it became apparent just how much rail traffic from the ports was expected to increase to accommodate the flood of imports from Asian countries. As this traffic began to build up, the existing routes of the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Santa Fe were quickly overwhelmed by the load. These lines all were built in the 1880-1920 time frame, and included many road crossings at grade. Frequent, slow moving container trains would frequently tie up road crossings for long periods of time, making life in the cities south of Los Angeles frustrating for anyone who had to travel across the tracks. And homes located near the tracks were frequently blasted by loud horns from the locomotives as they approached road crossings. When construction on the Alameda Corridor "trench" began in the late 1990s, much of the population of cities like Inglewood, El Segundo, Lawndale and Torrance looked forward to traffic on the Harbor Sub in the near future.

I have lived near the Harbor Sub since 1983, first in El Segundo, and now in Torrance. Thus I was well aware when it was announced that it was planned to divert all through trains from the district onto Alameda Corridor rails early in 2002. About a year before the scheduled end of through operations, I spent a lot of time documenting the operations of the line, and took a lot of photos of trains at numerous location. The images offered in the photo gallery have been selected to show a cross-section of operations during this busy time, though a few have been added recently to show locations not covered previously. The line runs through both industrial and residential districts, providing a lot of variety for anyone willing to seek out unusual photo angles and situations.

The last regular through train on the district left Harbor Junction at about 19:00 on April 14, 2002, dropped its train of empty stack well cars at Alcoa, and ended its run at Watson Yard just after midnight. On April 15, 2002, the Alameda Corridor opened, replacing the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific lines to the port with a single, fast, direct triple-track route at subgrade. After that date, through traffic was removed from the Harbor Subdivision, leaving only the local freights at either end of the line. The central part of the route, between milepost 8 and milepost 14, were taken out of service. Four days later, the last Track Warrant (shown above) was issued to the First Watson Roadswitcher for its work between Watson Yard and El Segundo. At midnight that night, the line was declared within yard limits over its entire length, and operations commenced at restricted speed without the need for dispatcher control. The Watson Roadswitchers became yard jobs known as the 711, 712, 713 and 723 jobs, with BNSF train symbols such as YLAC0713-16A.

Next: BNSF Harbor Subdivision Today

Update December 28, 2004