The start of the Old Dad Mountains.
The climb up Lavic Hill.
Looking back down the grade towards Ludlow as we climb up Lavic Hill.
The Rodman Mountains.
The Old Dad Mountains to the north.
The depression to the west of Lavic.
Pisgah Crater is the youngest vent in the Lavic Lake volcanic field, last erupting 2,000 years ago.
Pisgah Crater had a historic elevation of 2,638 feet, but has been reduced to 2,545 feet due to mining. It was the site of the Mount Pisgah Volcanic Cinders Mine, a cinder quarry that produced pumice for commercial use, the primary end product being railroad ballast for the Santa Fe Railroad. The mountain is currently owned by Can-Cal Resources Limited, a Canadian company specializing in exploration of precious minerals in California.
Mining has had a severe environmental impact; the top of the mountain has been removed and the sides of this historically symmetrical mountain have been scoured into an irregular shape. The mountain is still occasionally quarried for various cinder products, and sand from the mountain was used to depict the black sands of Iwo Jima in the film "Letters from Iwo Jima".
The Newberry Mountains.
The Old Dad Mountains.
A marker beacon in Hector.
The Pisgah lava field extends onto Hector Dry Lake.
Hector Dry Lake on both sides of the BNSF mainline.
The Newberry Mountains that sits in front of Newberry Springs.
The Calico Mountains across the valley.
The Rodman Mountains.
The Barstow-Daggett Airport.
A green field.
Solar One's power plant just east of Daggett.
A coal-fired power plant at Daggett.
The Union Pacific mainline joins the BNSF mainline for its trackage rights to Riverside Jct.
Looking towards the United States Marine Corps Base at Yermo.
The Yermo Hills.
The Yermo storage base locomotives.
Barstow Water District ponds.
Some fields before we reached Barstow.
A train was ready to leave the old Barstow Yard.
The original mainline went around the hill to the left before the deep cut was built which the Southwest Chief just passed through to reach Barstow.
The highway bridge across the Mojave River.
The Barstow station and Harvey House Museum, which also houses the Western American Railroad Museum.
Santa Fe SWBLW 1460 known as the "Beep". It was built by Baldwin in 1943 as Santa Fe V0-1000 2220 and rebuilt into Baldwin-Geep hybrid in 1970. It ran for years at the Argentine Yard in Kansas City, Kansas before it was retired at Topeka and was recently donated to the museum.
