Eagle Mountain Railroad
Constructed in 1947–1948, it was used until 1986 to haul iron ore from Kaiser's Eagle Mountain Mine in the Colorado Desert to an interchange with the Southern Pacific Transportation Company in the Coachella Valley.
Upon leaving the Ferrum interchange yard, the track immediately climbs a hill, then descends to a wooden trestle.
Continuing north, the tracks cross the Bradshaw Trail before passing through a small cut and entering the first of two horseshoe curves.
After curving along the Chocolate Mountains for two miles (3 km), the tracks turn south and cross the Salt Creek Wash on the railroad's longest bridge.
All loaded ore trains descending Caution Hill were restricted to 15 mph (24 km/h) and were required to come to a complete stop at the bottom for 5 minutes to cool their brakes before proceeding.
In that year Kaiser Steel purchased a large deposit located at Cushenbury, California, 75 miles (121 km) from the Fontana Mill.
This was one of the longest privately built standard gauge railroads constructed in the American Southwest in the post World War II era.
During early operations, ore was loaded into Southern Pacific gondola and open-top hopper cars of 50-, 60- and 70-ton capacity.
Loading the railcars with the processed iron ore at Eagle Mountain was fairly simple and required no locomotives to be used.
This action western starred Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Jack Palance and Claudia Cardinale.
The basic story involved four men, each with unique talents, being hired by a millionaire to rescue his wife, who was kidnapped by a Mexican bandit.
At the end of the film, they hijack the "Gold Coast Flyer" pulled by famed locomotive Southern Pacific 4449, and run it full throttle to the Mexican border.
On March 31, 1986, the seven car special train departed Los Angeles at 10:00am and arrived on the Eagle Mountain Railroad at Ferrum around 6:00pm.
On November 3, 1981, Kaiser Steel announced the phasing out of half the Fontana Mill and the closure of the entire Eagle Mountain Mine over the next few years.
In June 1983, the last official graduating class celebrated their commencement at Eagle Mountain High School, followed by closing of both the mine and mill a few months later.
Shortly after the last iron ore had been shipped out in 1986, the California Department of Corrections proposed placing a privately operated prison for low-risk inmates at Eagle Mountain.
During 1988, a proposal was made to turn one of the gigantic 1.5-mile-long (2.4 km) by half-mile-wide (800 m) mining pits into a massive, high-tech sanitary landfill.
In August 2000, Kaiser Ventures reached an agreement with the Los Angeles Sanitation Districts, a public entity consisting of several Los Angeles public waste collection agencies, to purchase the landfill project to replace the Puente Hills landfill, which would be nearing the end of its useful life.
To accomplish this, a single switcher locomotive (painted for Kaiser Ventures) was brought to the property to operate small work trains.
In August and September 2003, approximately 10 mi (16 km) of track were damaged when two flash floods hit the railroad.
In several locations, culverts were washed out leaving track suspended in the air although no significant structures were damaged as all bridges held up well to the flood waters.
In April 2017, a railroad materials company began removing the track by working its way from Eagle Mountain to Ferrum.
It was sold by C&O to Pan American Engineering in Dallas, Texas in January 1958 and resold to Kaiser Steel later that year.
These five Baldwin locomotives were being used on a daily basis and all five were required to move a single train from the Eagle Mountain Mine to the interchange at Ferrum.
The railroad was leasing two additional Baldwin AS616's from Southern Pacific, but still couldn't keep five locomotives running on a regular basis.
Most of the time, four were assigned to the daily iron-ore trains, while the fifth locomotive would be used as a spare or be cycled through the Southern Pacific's Taylor Shops for routine maintenance and repairs.
Both were bay-window style with ASF Andrew-type four wheel trucks, National coiled spring bearings, and used Kaiser ship-type welded steel plate construction.
The maintenance shop at Eagle Mountain started repairs on KS 1905 but it was quickly halted once the damage was determined to be too extensive.
The rebuilding gave the "new" KS 1905 rubbered molding windows, axle belt-driven alternator, ice box, new water tank, and an air-flush commode.
[3] The "new" KS 1905 was donated by Kaiser Steel to the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association (PSRMA) in June 1984.
