The Trona Railway
A Single Industry Shortline
BY RUSS REINBERG
THE TRONA RAILWAY is 80 years old, 30.6 miles long, and 4 feet 8 1/2 inches wide. It exports potash for industrial fertilizer, soda ash for industrial cleaners, and borax products for the production of paint. The line connects the mines and chemical plants in the small town of Trona with the Southern Pacific at Searles Junction.
Trona sits on the shore of Searles Lake, a dry bed. John W. Searles named it in 1862, discovered its borax deposits, and set up a plant to treat the ore. Initially long mule trains carried out the cargo. In the early 1880s, the Southern Pacific built a line through the area and in 1914, after several years of financial ups and downs, the American Trona Corporation built a standard gauge railroad.
Passenger service ended in 1937 except for a special "school train" railbus. That stopped running in 1941 but the railbus itself still runs on the Willits "Skunk" line.
Today, trains run six days per week and usually consist of a late morning outbound and an inbound whose schedule depends entirely on that of the Southern Pacific. On the date of our visit, February 25 of this year, the inbound train ran at about 11 p.m. Three times a week the Trona Railway hauls in 80 car coal trains to supply two power plants. Occasionally a freight train may arrive with industrial supplies.
Underground water, generally no closer to the surface than ten feet, contains the mineral deposits. North American Industries pumps out the water, extracts the chemicals, and loads them into large covered hoppers. The Trona Railway owns or leases about 1500 such cars and nearly all are in constant service.
Over its history, the Trona Railway has owned a pair of Baldwin Consolidations (2-8-0), a Mikado (2-8-2), and some Fairbanks-Morse Trainmasters. Motive power currently consists of six General Motors EMD SD40-2 diesel powerplants in SD45 bodies, a single SD9 road unit probably undergoing an overhaul as you read this, and a beautifully rebuilt SW1200 switcher. The company has its own shops and recently has begun doing work for other railroads. It is capable of rebuilding and repainting its entire roster.
The railroad has a tradition of beautifully maintained equipment and the shops still wash the locomotives every week.
The Trona Railway owns a port in San Diego. So the freight leaves town behind Trona Railway locomotives, Southern Pacific engines pick it up at Searles Junction and run it down to San Diego, and the Santa Fe hauls it from the SP tracks to the port. From there, ships carry much of the cargo to Asia, Europe, and New Zealand. The rest travels by rail throughout the United States.
The railroad's personnel includes a Trainmaster, Mike Paradise, who provided most of this information, four engineers, and five men in the shops.
