LUDLOW ADVENTURE 2008 - News At Eleven

[cabcar]

Last one...

--Robert

[jeff]

I mentioned to Mark that I was interested in the railroad, and as a photographer I was looking to get a few shots of the related displays. He said that their historical group was almost done with the replica station house of the original Goffs depot.

Once back on the public roadway, we drove over towards the depot. It really looks nice, really nice. They will be using the building for the soon to be formed Mojave Desert Archives and Library. Interior finishing touches are still to be done.

Two or three organizations are active here:

Friends of the Mojave Road

Friends of the Goffs Schoolhouse

and The Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association

the address for all three is:
37198 Lanfair Road #G-15
Essex, California 92332-9786


~ ~ ~

The view of the depot from Lanfair Road.

~ jeff

[jeff]

And another view zoomed in.

Pretty nice, eh ??

~ jeff

[jeff]

And the final frame for Goffs... The town's mailboxes.

~ jeff

[kenszok]

Wow! Great series so far. Jeff, I especially like the vertical code line and the mailboxes.

Robert, Good set. I like your experiment shots best.

Ken

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Samantha and I made our way up to Ludlow after dropping my wife off at her clinical site (She's a nursing student) around 6:25 Saturday morning. We arrived at the campsite around 8:30 and hung out there listening to stories as some of the camper ate their breakfast. After a while, people began to head out for roaming and foaming while others made their way to the base camp site. Samantha and I went out to roam and foam. We took the dirt road along the tracks heading toward Ash Hill. We set up to wait for trains. The first train to come along for us was an eastbounder led by BNSF 7608.

[kenszok]

This next image shows Samantha capturing an image of the train. She is not as close to the tracks as it seems in this image.

[mkstarks]

jeff Wrote:I awoke, or rather ventured out of my tent at 6:06am this morning (Sunday Morning) with no sign of Marshall and Mike or their tent. It is likely that their Snooze-Liner-Extreem tent took them Air-Mail to Arizona or someother state to the east.

~ jeff

Yeah, sorry about not saying goobye to anyone but the wind was horrible! I got to sleep last night around 2200 only to be awakened around 0040 by the wind that was trying to launch Mike and myself to points further east. Mike and I discussed the possibility of just trying to wait for the wind to die down but with every passing moment it became more and more violent so we decided to break camp in the middle of the night rather than wait for the wind to break another pole (couple years back in Tehachapi).

We topped off at Chevron and were on the road by 0140 and boy did the wind make that an interesting drive. Everytime I compensated for one gust another would push the car the other way, then we got to drive through two dust storms before reaching Newberry. The wind kept at it all the way through Barstow before dying down for two or three miles, then it kicked back up.

We reached the top of Cajon and now there was a new weather element... FOG! Needless to say driving down a pitch black 15 in zero visibility will put you on edge. We finally broke through the fog to see several trains tied down on Cajon and a Hi Rail out at Cajon Station. After that it was smooth sailing all the way home with no traffic on the road, we arrived home at 0430.

The trip was a blast and was glad to see that even Shane made it out there :shock:. Lookin forward to the next event.

[kenszok]

We started heading back to the paved road when we saw another eastbound in the distance. We stopped to set up for this approaching train. BNSF 5188 came upon our location with one of the units sending up a lot of smoke.

[kenszok]

We made our way toward Amboy. Samatha wanted to see the shoe tree again. I saw Marshall and Chris heading the other way to get a place for a westbound that was passing through West Siberia. Samantha and I continued on to Amboy choosing not to stop for this train. On the way to Amboy, we came upon a couple groups of bicycle rider taking up the lane. The people in both groups looked like casual riders, not the cyclists usually encountered on roads like this. We got to the shoe tree just east of Amboy and took our pictures. I noticed a green bag attached to one of the post for the bumper guard at the side of the road. The bag had a note bacically indicating that it related to the cyclists on the road. It was full of sealed envelopes. I guess there was some form of relay or bike-a-thon. We began to make our way back to the base camp at Ludlow. There were some flowering trees and shrubs I wanted to photograph on our way back, so we made a couple stops along the way. A westbound train was approaching, and I set up to try something diferent. BNSF 5415 came upon our roadside location.

[kenszok]

Here is a view of the train's DPUs going away.