Hopes for Future Given a Ride on Old Railroad

The first passenger train in more than 37 years poked its way Saturday along the vintage San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway line between San Ysidro and Jacumba, in a daylong rolling party dubbed a “ride into the future on San Diego’s oldest railroad.”

The five-car train, which included vintage chair and Pullman cars, chugged along the winding line for some 65 miles, including 44 miles inside Mexico between the border and Campo, where the railroad re-enters the United States. The line opened in November, 1919, after several years of hard construction through the mountainous East County and Baja California, the culmination of financier John D. Spreckels’ dream for a direct rail route east from San Diego, bypassing Los Angeles.

The special train, the first to load passengers exclusively since Jan. 11, 1951, carried 135 people, most of them on board to enjoy the rare occasion as well as to get a first-hand view for potential freight customers of a reopened line that would include the transport of trash away from San Diego for recycling.

At times, the train moved slowly enough for kids in Tecate, Mexico, to put coins on the rails ahead of the engine and for dogs to keep up a panting pace alongside.

The full line extends from downtown San Diego to El Centro in Imperial County and is owned by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board. The MTDB bought the line in 1979 from the Southern Pacific Railroad as part of the deal that paved the way for the San Diego Trolley. The trolley runs along SD&AE; tracks between downtown and the border, and along a branch line between downtown and El Cajon.

At the time MTDB bought the railroad, freight service had been disrupted for more than three years, after the 1976 tropical storm Kathleen caused washouts at 89 points along a 30-mile stretch running east of Jacumba through the rugged Carriso Gorge and dropping onto the desert floor area near Ocotillo.

Southern Pacific repaired the damage as a condition of sale but soon afterward, in early 1980, winter storms again damaged stretches near Ocotillo as well as in Mexico. That damage was repaired in 1983 and a private operator under contract to MTDB began service, carrying gypsum and plasterboard from the U.S. Gypsum Co. town of Plaster City east of Ocotillo to the port of San Diego.

Fires Ended Service

But two fires shortly thereafter in several of the 17 redwood-lined tunnels through the Carriso Gorge ended through service and operations have essentially been moribund since. Damage in the gorge remains unrepaired and a fire less than a month ago occurred in another of the many tunnels.

The present freight operator, RailTex of Texas, operating as the San Diego & Imperial Valley Railroad Co., believes that the growth of industry in the Tijuana area as well as the potential for business in the Campo area could make repairs and renewed operations feasible. The railroad now provides local service between San Diego and El Cajon, and between the Tijuana area and San Diego, which connects to Santa Fe Railway freight trains north to the Los Angeles area.

A joint venture company called Recycle 2000 has proposed moving more than 1.5 million tons of solid waste from San Diego to a plant either in Baja California, the Jacumba area or in Imperial Valley for recycling.

A detailed plan is yet to be drawn up and would have to be approved by the numerous government agencies required to review such proposals. But the company’s concept envisions organic non-food, non-ceramic materials being transported in sealed rail cars to a facility for either recovery as energy or burial in a landfill.

The venture includes Taconic Resources Inc. and Ogden Martin Systems, a firm that builds waste recycling systems. The president of Taconic, Richard Chase, also serves as managing director of a separate company involved in the controversial plans for a trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos.

That plant has won necessary construction approvals from the city of San Marcos but construction is on hold pending revisions in contracts between the company and the county of San Diego. The county owns the landfill where the plant would be built. In addition, a number of lawsuits remain filed by private citizens and the city of Encinitas challenging the plant on environmental and land-use grounds.