A pair of freights claw their way up the 2.2% grades approaching Cajon Pass as they leave San Bernardino behind on a crystal-clear spring day. On the left, on Santa Fe’s First District, is a Union Pacific piggyback train pulled by UP SD40 3051, DD35 74B and DD35 82B. On the left, on Southern Pacific’s eleven-year-old "Palmdale Cutoff," SP SD45 8917, SD40T-2 8354, a U33C and an SD45T-2 drag a freight out of nearby West Colton Yard. These trains may be running side-by-side, but the UP is eastbound and the SP is westbound, thanks to the SP’s determination that any train heading toward the corporate headquarters in San Francisco is a westbound (the SP train is generally heading north). And, on the Santa Fe this is Devore (also the name of the small community here), while on the SP this location is known as Dike. An SP SD45 sits in the Dike helper pocket. The caboose with white ends on the right is the trainorder office for Dike, with another such caboose/trainorder office at the summit of Cajon Pass (known as Hiland on the SP). Looming in the distance nearly 40 miles away is Mt. San Gorgonio, at 11,503-feet (3,506 m) the highest point in southern California. The mountain hosts the longest recorded line of sight in the contiguous United States, as it is plainly visible from the summit of 14,505 ft (4,421 m) Mt. Whitney, some 190 miles (306 km) to the north in the Sierra Nevada range, the highest point in the US outside of Alaska. (Devore, California – March 25, 1978)
