BNSF Railway train Q-NYCLAC1-01A descends a slight grade as it passes from Siberia to Klondike on the railway's Needles Sub, which crosses the Mojave Desert. The old Southern Pacific surveyors of the 1880s obviously had a sense of humor – or perhaps irony – when they assigned names to many of these locations! This line would eventually be sold by the SP to the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway's predecessor Atlantic & Pacific, and today is operated by the BNSF Railway. Today’s Q-NYCLAC has a pair of Norfolk Southern diesels on the headend, with NS's Pennsylvania Railroad Heritage ES44AC 8102 up front, followed by NS Dash 9-40CW 9898 and BNSF Dash 9-44CW 670 (the former ATSF 670). This New York to Los Angeles intermodal train is on the North Main (the line originally built by the SP in the 1880s) and the old Santa Fe bridge spanning a wash in the foreground is the South Main, constructed in 1923 when the Santa Fe double-tracked the mainline between Needles and Barstow and, at this location, the two tracks separate for a brief distance. (Siberia, California – February 3, 2014)
