Hey everyone and welcome to another video.
Today, we’re going to take a look at some clips I filmed a few years back.
In early 2016, I went with a couple of friends to catch one of the Union Pacific heritage
locomotives pulling a train on the UP Coast Line through California’s Salinas Valley
and over the Coastal Mountains.
Now my original intent was to use these video clips for an episode of Heritage Unit Profiles,
but I’ve decided for now to at long last release these clips as a separate video.
So with that, let’s rewind the clock to January of 2016 to follow Union Pacific 1988
on the Coast Line.
We got up super early to drive north along US Highway 101.
Our goal was to catch Union Pacific 1988 on the front of a freight train that was making
its way south along UP’s Coast Line, which runs between Oakland and Burbank, California
by way of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
We settled on an initial location just north of King City with a view of a tunnel and the
Salinas River Valley below.
It wasn’t long of a wait before the train emerged from the tunnel.
UP 1988 is an SD70ACe type locomotive built in 2005.
It is painted to recognize the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, which served several midwestern
states from 1865 until 1988.
We moved to another location a few miles south of King City.
Near Camp Roberts, the train crossed a bridge over the Salinas River.
This train is recognized in the Union Pacific System under the train ID of AOAHO - an automobile
carrying train traveling from Oakland, California to Houston, Texas.
The AOAHO is a train that runs on an as needed basis, moving empty auto rack cars down the
Coast Line and then to Texas by way of the Sunset Route through Southern Arizona and
New Mexico.
In recent years, they have become one of the few through freight trains to run over the
Coast Line, as most traffic has been rerouted over Tehachapi Pass.
On the north side of Paso Robles, UP 1988 brought the train around a sweeping curve.
It may be the beginning of winter, but springtime green is already starting to appear.
A few miles down the line in Santa Margarita, we waited for the train to pass by.
These old Searchlight “target” style signals are a relic of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
As time passes, more and more of these older signals with internal moving components are
replaced with more modern LED tri-light signals.
The train descended the mountain pass known as Cuesta and crossed over the massive Stenner
Creek Trestle.
San Luis Obispo was just around the corner.
With winter greatly limiting the amount of available daylight, we rolled on down to Price
Canyon just north of Grover Beach to see the train one more time.
The AOAHO was held at San Luis Obispo for several hours to wait for a crew change and
for both the northbound and southbound Amtrak Coast Starlight to clear.
A little after 3:30 in the afternoon, southbound train 11 rolled through the canyon.
At long last, the AOAHO was once again on the move as it rolled through the canyon in
the last available sunlight.
As the sun disappeared in the west, we decided to call it a day.
Thanks for joining me for this look back at UP 1988 on the Coast Line.
Once again, a big thank you to all my friends on Patreon for making this video possible.
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I’ll see you next Friday at 9 AM Pacific time for another railroad themed adventure
right here on the YouTube channel.
That’s it for now.
Until next time, I’m Mike Armstrong.
I’ll see you down the line!
Thanks for watching.