Is the Fast Track Ahead? : Railway: The San Diego & Imperial Valley railroad is plagued by old equipment and weary tracks. Free trade agreement could change that.

Look past the goats, cattle and pigs that stray onto the lone railroadtrack that heads south into Mexico from San Ysidro’s dusty railroad depot and you can see the impact that free trade portends for the United States and Mexico.

Each weekday morning, U.S. and Mexican customs agents unlock a pair of worn padlocks on the rusted gate that blocks the aging track between San Ysidro and Tijuana. After cars are inspected and paperwork is completed, an aging pair of San Diego & Imperial Valley Railroad Co. diesel locomotives slowly moves off on a daylong, 90-mile round trip into Mexico.

The SD&IV;’s cargo manifest varies by day. Early one morning in mid-October, more than 30 cars carried lumber from the Pacific Northwest, malt from the Midwest, liquid propane gas from Texas, lard from South Dakota and steel from as far away as Canada.

The tiny rail line bears witness to Mexico’s hunger for U.S. goods, hunger that could grow ravenous under the pending North American Free Trade Agreement. But it also illustrates some of the immediate roadblocks to free trade’s success: Mexican roads, rail lines and other infrastructure are woefully inadequate by U.S. standards and probably incapable of channeling a major infusion of goods into the interior.

History has proven that trans-border trade flourishes “only where people and commodities can get across the border the fastest,” said San Diego State University economics professor Norris Clement.

Mexico already means good business for the SD&IV;, which has served a handful of customers in Baja California since 1986. Nearly 75% of the 6,000 cars the railroad hauled last year carried U.S. goods to Mexican customers, SD&IV; General Manager Daniel Botello said.

SD&IV; pays a surcharge on each car entering Mexico, but can still compete with truckers delivering to Baja California’s industrial customers. And certain U.S. commodities--lard, steel, malt and lumber--are competitive with goods hauled into Baja California from faraway suppliers in Central Mexico.

Tijuana residents use propane from the United States to heat houses, cook meals and power industrial machines. The Tecate brewery uses malt and corn sugar from the Midwest to brew that city’s namesake beer. Lard from U.S. meat-processing plants is packaged for sale to Mexican consumers. A mill in Garcia, outside of Tijuana, turns raw timber from the Pacific Northwest into finished products.

SD&IV; officials are banking on a boost if the United States, Mexico and Canada enact the North American Free Trade Act, which would probably eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers.

“Trade would flourish between the U.S. and northern Baja,” Botello said. “We’d have a tremendous advantage over trucks because we’re more cost-effective.”

SD&IV; customers also believe that free trade bodes well for the railroad.

“We’re probably as good an example as any of what free trade will do for lot of other companies,” said Jaime Cuadra, chief financial officer for Cal-State Lumber Sales, a San Ysidro-based lumber company that hauls lumber to a mill in Mexico on the SD&IV.;

Cal-State’s only alternative is shipping lumber by truck, a costly and time-consuming process. “The railroad is really beneficial to us,” Cuadra said.

But in order for SD&IV; to take advantage of the expected upswing in free-trade business, it somehow will have to overcome Baja California’s dearth of rail services and the rail line’s own aging track to nowhere, home as much to roving livestock as to international transit.

The SD&IV;’s predicament “should serve as an alarm for San Diego and Tijuana,” said Charles Nathanson, executive director of San Diego Dialogue, a group that has studied border issues. “People seem to think we’ll thrive given free trade, but the benefits will come only if we’re able to move goods across the border . . . and we’re not set up to do that in San Diego-Tijuana.”

That isn’t the case in Texas, where north-south tracks owned by major U.S. and Mexican railroads converge. “Texas seems to be doing a pretty good job of resolving their infrastructure problems with Mexico,” Clement said. “It’s a mystery to me why we can’t do better in the San Diego-Tijuana region.”

Train traffic between the two countries also is complicated by concerns among customs officials in both countries. After the SD&IV; hauls commodities into Mexico, it returns with empty cars, in part because of trade barriers erected by the two countries.

U.S. Customs officials are concerned that regular train traffic across the border will dramatically increase the potential for drug smuggling. Anti-drug efforts--including time-consuming searches of massive cars laden with goods--could stall train traffic at the border, raising costs.

There are other problems.

The SD&IV; travels on an aging section of track in Baja California that, while suitable for slow traffic, is ill-suited for fast-moving freights.

The track lacks connections to Tijuana, Ensenada, Mexicali and other key Baja cities. Commodities now are shipped among those cities by truck.

And, where the track finally crosses back into the United States near Campo, collapsed tunnels make it impossible to travel to El Centro, where trains could hook up with the Southern Pacific Railroad, which operates tracks that lead to Mexico’s mainland railroad.

As it stands now, the SD&IV; depends on the powerful Santa Fe Railway, which hauls cars to San Diego along tracks leading south from Los Angeles.

The SD&IV; shuttles them into Mexico, operating at night on tracks that, by day, are used by the San Diego Trolley.

The SD&IV; link from the Santa Fe to Baja California would grow in importance if, as rumored, a group of private investors in Mexico builds a rail line from Tecate to Ensenada. The group is also rumored to be considering a line from Tecate to Mexicali farther east, which would give the SD&IV; access to Mexico’s mainland railroad.

Intriguingly, the SD&IV;’s Mexican connection is the result of geographical happenstance.

In the early 1900s, sugar magnate John Spreckels envisioned a 110-mile, east-west railroad that would break San Diego’s historical dependence on the Los Angeles transportation hub by moving goods directly to major railroads to the east. Engineers avoided steep terrain in eastern San Diego County by routing a 45-mile stretch of track through Baja California.

But Spreckels’ railroad failed to challenge the powerful Santa Fe, and the section of track in Baja California was eventually deeded to Mexico’s federal government. The SD&IV; renewed service on the line in 1986.

Since then, the SD&IV;, which is owned by San Antonio-based RailTex, has carved out a small but profitable niche serving Mexican businesses and U.S. customers on a line that stretches between San Diego and El Cajon.

South of the border, the SD&IV; travels on a single, aging track that serves industrial customers along Tijuana’s river zone.

Two aging tunnels lead to the rural hills and valleys that stretch about 35 miles to Tecate, where the SD&IV;’s track moves to the north, finally crossing back into the United States.

For SD&IV;’s crew, the daily runs into Baja are as much journeys into the past as trips into another country.

“This is a piece of history,” SD&IV; Operations Supt. Fred Byle says on a recent morning as the train slowly picks up speed and moves along the aging track. “This is the way American railroads operated decades ago.”

For starters, there are no electronic gates at railroad crossings in Tijuana or the surrounding countryside. Stop signs are widely ignored; a steady stream of pedestrians and vehicles crosses the track at will.

Some risk-takers lose the race, and SD&IV; engines have mowed down some vehicles at crossings. One death--a pedestrian who evidently fell asleep on the tracks and was mistaken for a pile of rags--has occurred since 1986.

As the train creeps along the track, it passes half a dozen pigs that graze contentedly on weeds growing near the tracks. Minutes later, the crew nods to a man herding several goats across the line.

A wandering horse stops on the tracks 100 yards ahead of the train, casting a wary eye. Eventually, the animal dashes off to safety, “proving once again that animals are smarter than people,” Byle says.

“This is a new adventure every day,” says Byle, who once escaped a charging bull by hopping aboard a boxcar.

Engineer William Dowd keeps the train running at considerably less than 20 m.p.h., the maximum speed allowed within Tijuana city limits. In contrast, high-speed freight trains on mainline U.S. railroads travel upward of 60 m.p.h.

On several occasions, Dowd throttles down to a crawl in order to avoid hitting illegally parked vehicles and pedestrians who cross at myriad street crossings and worn footpaths.

Fast-moving freights in the United States wouldn’t be able to maintain speeds on the coarser Mexican track, Byle said. Even the SD&IV; slows considerably when rounding bends and climbing steeper grades in the hills to the east of Tijuana.

More than half the railroad crew’s working day typically is spent shuffling cars onto sidings. In a painstakingly slow ballet, Dowd nudges the train forward and backward 21 times in order to deposit 14 propane cars and four steel cars at the appropriate sidings in Tijuana.

“It sounds easier than it is,” Byle says. “It’s like playing checkers, except that you can’t pick your pieces up and down.”

Within Tijuana’s city limits, the train travels through gritty neighborhoods where industry, modern apartments and crumbling shantytowns sit side by side.

Tijuana’s bustle gradually gives way to the countryside as the SD&IV; approaches the foot of Rodriguez Dam, which supplies much of Tijuana’s water supply. The transition from city to country is complete when the SD&IV; engines clear a pair of tunnels just beyond the dam.

On the other side of the tunnels, the cacophony of Tijuana’s, cars, trucks and helter-skelter development gives way to road runners, rabbits, hawks and squirrels.

The first stop beyond the tunnels is Garcia, where the SD&IV; drops off cars filled with lumber from the Pacific Northwest. Occasionally, the train crew drops off grain at a makeshift stop in the outback.

The SD&IV; used to haul cement back from a plant near Garcia for sale in the United States. But the business was derailed when U.S. cement manufacturers alleged that the Mexican producer was unfairly dumping its product at below-market prices.

Beyond Garcia is Tecate, where one of Mexico’s leading breweries uses corn sugar and malt from the Midwest to brew the famous beer.

On the uneventful return trip from Tecate, the aging diesels coast down the gentle grade that leads to Tijuana.

Within the city limits, Dowd slows the train, rings the bell and blows the horn as pedestrians and motorists madly dash across tracks during Tijuana’s rush hour. Contreras somehow manages to concentrate on completing the paperwork needed to clear Customs and return to San Ysidro.

Fortunately, both Mexican and U.S. customs agents are at the gate when the train arrived.

That isn’t always the case. On Columbus Day, the engines idled 4 1/2 hours on the Mexican side because customs officials were busy elsewhere.

On this day, a solitary customs agent quickly checks car numbers against the railroad’s manifest and climbs into cars to check for contraband and stowaways.

When none are found, the train heads home. The padlocks are locked and the rusted border gate is closed.