The inside gateway

There are three rail routes from Oregon into California. The least known of the three is the Inside Gateway route. used by the BNSF Railway. The line is the newest - built in 1931. It connected the Great Northern at Klamath Falls with the Western Pacific up through the Feather River Canyon. The lines met in the middle of nowhere, at Bieber, California. For many years this marked the place where the locomotives and cabooses of one line were exchanged with those of the other. This route connected with the Santa Fe Railroad in the Central Valley, providing a through route to the bay area. Because of its circuitous routing, it never could compete with the much shorter Southern Pacific routes to the west. Hence, the line never carried a lot of traffic.

In the present day, the Great Northern, the Western Pacific, and the Santa Fe are gone. The BNSF controls the entire route, and routes their California bound trains down this line.

In 1999 I captured a southbound at the appropriately named place of Stateline. The lead locomotive is within a few yards of crossing into California.