Lompoc & Surf, CA. trains in 4K: 2015-2016 on Union Pacific's Santa Barbara subdivision

Описание: All these trains were filmed in and around Lompoc, CA and Surf, CA (near the mouth of the Lompoc valley where the Santa Ynez river empties into the Pacific ocean).

Sorry for some of the camera shake and wind noise. There is routinely 8mph to 21mph winds here on average (with gusts even higher) that funnel up the Lompoc valley from the ocean as the day goes on. There is just so much optical image stabilization can do for a camera on a tripod during high winds.

Union Pacific's Lompoc local train seen in this video (Two EMD GP40-2s based out of Guadalupe, CA) comes usually twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays and averages 3 cars each day) into town to pick up hopper cars from the Imery's diatomaceous earth mine (Formally Johns Manville and Celite).

It's called the White Hills branch line. It consists of about a 3.5 mile climb out of Lompoc and up Miguelito canyon to the mine at a reported 3% grade at times.

The 2-track railyard (at about the 9:29 mark) can be seen in the 2004 Academy Awards nominated movie "Sideways" when actors Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church cross those tracks in their car to go back to retrieve the wallet.

It used to have many more tracks in the yard when Southern Pacific RR (now Union Pacific RR) had a permanent yard engine assigned to it. It picked up cars from both Johns Manville (now Imery's) and Grefco (a competing diatomaceous earth company that closed in 1998). It would bring the cars out to Surf, CA.... which is 10 miles west of Lompoc where Union Pacific's Coast Line mainline (Santa Barbara subdivision) is.... to be picked up.

With both the reduced volume of rail car pickups in the 1990's and the Grefco plant closing, there was no real need to have a full switching yard or a dedicated Lompoc locomotive anymore. So they took out all of the yard tracks... but two. The engines now come into town from the yard in Guadalupe, CA ....which is 36.2 track miles away.

The Surfliner trains, the Coast Starlight, the Lompoc local and a Union Pacific mixed local (called the "Guadalupe Turn") are seen here at Surf, CA and the rail bridge over the Santa Ynez river (next to Ocean Park) that's less than a mile north of the Surf station.

The California Surfliner stops at Surf station....but Amtrak's Los Angeles-to-Seattle Coast Starlight does not. The Guadalupe Turn leaves GEMCO Yard in Van Nuys and travels 181.8 track miles north up the coast to Guadalupe Yard. After a overnight layover, it turns around an heads back.

That scaffolding-looking structure you see up the hill in the distance as the Lompoc local heads back north to Guadalupe on the mainline? It is the SLC-2W Delta II rocket launch pad on the northside of Vandenberg Air Force Base. (The launch pad has since been decommissioned and demolished).

Filmed with my Sony FDR-AX100 UHD 4K camcorder.