Trona Railway
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 Route near Trona
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| Route length: | 49.165 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Trona Railway (TRC) is an American Short Line - railway company in eastern California in the Mojave Desert . The company is based in Trona .
The most important transport goods are sulfuric acid, sodium carbonate, potassium salt, sodium sulfate, borax, coal and other minerals. There are also transports for the military base Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake .
history
The company was founded on March 12, 1913 by the American Trona Corporation to build a railway line from Searles on the Southern Pacific Mojave – Owenyo (Jawbone Branch) to Trona. Work began on September 22, 1913. The 49.165 kilometer long connection was put into operation on September 6, 1914.
From the beginning, the route was intended to transport the mineral resources. In order to be able to operate the line economically and over the long term, value was placed on a good superstructure . So an attempt was made to keep the slopes low and the curves wide. The route runs from Searles to Trona on a steady gradient.
Passenger traffic was initially carried out with a flat car on which seats were attached. Later a steel passenger car was used. From 1935 a benzene railcar from Skagit Steel & Iron Works was used to transport students from Borosolvay, Burnham and Westend. Passenger traffic was discontinued in 1937 and school transport in 1941. The railcar was then sold to the California Western Railroad .
For economic use, the Trona Railway agreed with the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1980s that the trains of the SP ran through to Trona and only the staff was changed in Searles.
Since its establishment, the Trona Railway has always been owned by the mining company operating in Trona, which was called American Potash & Chemical Corporation from 1926 and was renamed Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation in 1969 . In 1990 the North American Chemical Company acquired the Trona plant and the railroad company. In 1998 it was acquired by IMC Global Corporation . In 2004 the operations in Searles Valley and the railroad were spun off into a separate company Searles Valley Minerals Inc. , which was taken over in 2007 by the Indian industrial group Nirma Limited.
At the Magnesia route point, goods were reloaded from the Epsom Salts Monorail from 1924 to 1926 .
Rail vehicles
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In 2006, the Trona Railway had an EMD SW1200 , two EMD SD40-2R , 3 EMD SD40T-2 and four EMD SD40-2 in use.
During the construction, two steam locomotives of the type 2'C leased from the Southern Pacific were used. When the line opened, there were two 1'D locomotives newly built by Baldwin , which largely corresponded to the Southern Pacific class C-9. Due to the increased traffic, the company acquired a used 1'D1 'locomotive in 1937, which was originally procured by the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad .
Diesel locomotives were used from 1949. For this purpose, the company acquired two new Baldwin DT-6-6-20 (No. 50 and 51), in 1954 a Baldwin AS-616 (No. 52) followed, followed by two other used ones of this type in 1960 and 1986 (No. 53 and 54) followed. Later a GE 80-ton was used as a shunting locomotive.
No. 50 and 51 were sold in 1973, the remaining Baldwin locomotives were replaced by six in 1992 from the acquired Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway EMD SD45-2 .
literature
- Edward A. Lewis: American Shortline Railway Guide . 5th edition. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, WI 1996, ISBN 0-89024-290-9 .
- David C. Lustig: Baldwins on the Trona . In: Railfan & Railroad . Carstens Publications, Inc., Newton (New Jersey) November 1987 ( Baldwins on the Trona ( Memento of May 8, 1998 in the Internet Archive )).
- David F. Myrick: Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California . University of Nevada Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-87417-194-5 , pp. 798-808 ( Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California ).