Impossible Railroad
Monday, 25th June 2007 by Alex Turnbull
At the beginning of the 20th Century, San Diego needed a fast and reliable rail connection with the east to maintain growth and prosperity. Due to the hostile desert mountains it needed to negotiate on its way to Los Angeles eastward, the planned connection became known as 'The Impossible Railroad'.
It took the construction of 17 tunnels and 20 trestles to complete the most mountainous eleven-mile stretch, but the link was finally completed in 1919. However, when an earthquake destroyed one of the tunnels in 1932, the engineers were forced to chose an alternate route - which involved building The Goat Canyon Trestle.
The trestle is an absolutely spectacular structure over 600 feet long and 180 feet high, which is described as the longest curved wooden trestle in the world.1
Apparently this route was closed in 1976 after extremely heavy rain, but recently reopened for freight. In fact if you follow the tracks far enough south/west, you'll pass lots of different tunnels, several smaller trestles, and you'll eventually come across a train.
See also: Our post about The High Level Bridge, and a more complete history of the Goat Canyon Trestle.
Thanks to James.
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Or sometimes as the tallest curved wooden trestle... and sometimes only in the USA. It depends what website you read really. ↩︎
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
There appears to be another smaller train a few hundred metres further north from the one you highlighted – just south of the freeway. Talk about congestion… 🙂
Is this railway line going to Los Angeles? From your description I thought it was, but it appears to be going East not north, and the hiking website you link to mentions something about the line going to Arizona.
Just a little bit confused here….
Yes koen, I’ve followed the rails further east and it seems to split northward and eastward – the northern line looping back to LA, and the eastern track heading into arizona. So we’re both right 🙂
@Alex: Although there is a split going to LA, the split you linked to only goes as far as split mountain which appears to be a mine of some sort.
I like the way this is written in American. Some rough translations for English speakers:
“Railroad” means railway “Trestle” not sure – viaduct? “600 feet” roughly 200m “180 feet” around 60m and “Longest […] in the world” obviously means “longest […] in the USA”
😀
@Rollo: Lol! It was deliberate I assure you 🙂
Finally, yes Longest blah in the World might well mean the USA, but the title is so specific (it must be wooden as well as curved), that this probably does classify it as longest, or tallest in whatever category they wish to make up for it to fit into.
This railroad is in no way connected to Los Angeles. It was intended to provide a more direct route east.
Here is a better link on the history of this bridge:
Carrizo Railway
Hate to say this but most of us ‘older’ english still use feet and inches (although we have now given up using rods, poles and perches as units of measure)!!!
“I like the way this is written in American. Some rough translations for English speakers: “180 feet” around 60m”
think you’ll find most people in England use feet and inches over cm and metres, and with the ruling the other week that we don’t have to move to the metric system anymore so we can keep pints, stones, lb’s, feet, inches etc the imperial system will be around for quite some time!
i’ve just decided: if I ever win the lottery, I’m going to try visit every location on GS. i guess i should start buying tickets first…
That’s a brilliant idea russ! Can we come too? 😀
I saw a great segment on Huell Howser’s “California Gold” TV series. They walked across this bridge in the segment.
link: http://www.calgold.com/calgold/Default.asp?Series=1000&Show=102
another link: http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/2000-2/railroad.htm