O.S. Hiland - The Train Order Station at the Summit of S.P.'s line through Cajon Pass

O.S. Hiland on a pleasant fall morning in 1979

There is an ancient Chinese curse that says, “May You Live In Interesting Times.”
Well, from the vantage point of over fifty years of life, I’d say that my times have been very interesting. In fact, if I were a Vulcan I’d go so far as to say “Fascinating...” But never would I say that this was a curse. On the contrary, most of the events that have made-up my life have added-up to equal great joy. A large part of this has been my deep love for railroading, both model and full-scale. It is from this aspect of my life that I share with you the recollections of the times I spent at a certain train order station known officially to the Southern Pacific as O.S. HILAND, and known affectionately to me as “The Gooch Caboose.”

This is not so much a comprehensive article as it is, rather, a series of moments which, when put together, form a picture whose original pin-sharp brilliance has gently faded down like the aging of color dyes on an old Kodak transparency, to be re-toned by the golden hue of warm nostalgia.

O.S. HILAND was a train order station at the summit of the Southern Pacific’s Palmdale-Colton Cutoff through Southern California’s spectacular Cajon Pass.

The facilities consisted of an old C-40-3 type cupola caboose (no. 1202 RESTRICTED SERVICE), a small, modern mobile home nearby, and an outhouse. The outhouse, sitting directly in the desert sun, often stank.

On the front, or south, side of the caboose ran the S.P. mainline and the Hiland Siding.Next to tracks stood a tall pole with two over-and-under double-facing block signals, with a smaller "T.O." (for Train Order) signal just below. Mounted further down the pole was a floodlight which pointed at an extendable upright train order delivery pole right beside the track.

An S.P. conductor snags a train order "on the fly" from the extendable train order pole in front of Hiland, Summer 1976

Just down the hill from the S.P. tracks was the Santa Fe mainline, stretching past the Summit Station. The word “station” is used loosely, as the actual Summit Depot, and corresponding operations complex (wye, homes, bunkhouse, water tower, Post Office, etc.) were long since removed during the Summit Line Change. All that Summit is now are the double-track mainlines located several-hundred yards south of Hiland, with only a pair of high-speed crossovers, two short set-out tracks, and a lonely little sign saying- SUMMIT. In the last two decades, the Summit has been surrounded by fences and razor wire and stadium lights, and is now off-limits to railfans or anybody else.

I never got to visit the Old Summit while it still existed as a station community, as it was closed in 1967, and I wasn't into railfandom until 1975. In a strange way though, I miss the Old Summit just the same. Having been on the site so many times in my life, I can easily imagine what it looked like in its heyday.

But when I think of O.S. Hiland, it's a matter of personal memory.

My first trip up is kind of hazy, (matter of fact it’s downright overcast!) but my second visit was incredible. It was 1976. Summertime. I was 18, and this was my first “long­ distance” (from Glendale) campout, totally on my own with the car.

I was to meet my best friend Tim Johnson, the guy who got me into serious railfandom in the first place, at Summit that morning. I had just left the Santa Fe’s San Bernardino Yard, and had spent the next few years unraveling Highland Avenue, having overshot Old Cajon Boulevard (Historic Route 66) a way’s back. Granted, it is only 5:00 AM, the sun has barely begun to wake up, and I don’t have a real Thomas Bros map book.

But I wanna catch the sunrise at Sullivan’s Curve with my 35mm Ziess. I pray that a train will cooperate by simply being there at roughly the same time, and will kindly go up, not down, the hill for the picture.

About a quarter mile up the Old Cajon Boulevard, I am approaching the overpass that marks the transition between the urban areas of San Bernardino and the desert canyon that forms the lower Cajon Pass. It’s still dark out, but as the overpass passes over me, I can sense the open sky and the wild, scenic environment ahead, and I get thrilled and giddy. Enthusiastically, I tromp heavily down on the gas pedal, free of the city limits, and the engine dies!

The pedal just flops to the floor, and the car rolls to a stop at the side of the road. No mater how hard I try, I can’t get it to re-start. It’ll crank, but it won’t start. The engine is simply… dead.

At 5:00 AM on a Saturday.

In Cajon Pass.

As I tried to quell the rising panic I was feeling (I had no idea how to repair a car at that point in my young life), I grabbed the pedal, and pulled. It came free from the firewall, flopping uselessly on its hinge. I ran out and raised the hood, looking for anything obviously amiss. Nope, everything seemed OK. Then, re-entering the car, I knelt down into the footwell, down by the pedals, and looked closely. And there I saw, the throttle cable, right where it goes into the firewall, snapped and frayed, hanging out of the hole and grommet by about an inch.

After searching in vain for any tools, I flagged down a passing motorist, an older local dude in an old pickup truck. I had an idea…

About an hour later, my car and I came lurching into Sullivan’s Curve under our own power. I had managed to get the car, a 1967 blue Plymouth VALIANT named “Daylight”, drivable by using a pair of pliers kindly given to me by the old dude in the old truck, to grasp and pull the tiny frayed end of the throttle cable. I sat on the transmission hump in front of the bucket seats, my head resting on the center of the dash, grasping the pliers to pull the cable with my right hand, and steering the car with my left! If I needed to hit the brakes, I let go of the pliers and pushed down on the brake pedal with my hand. My head, resting on the dash, must have looked like a really weird Jack-O-Lantern or mannequin head in the windshield, to approaching motorists.

But, as I shook-off the nerves that were finally calming-down from driving ten miles on a pair of pliers, I slowly relaxed and realized where I was standing. The sun had climbed over Cleghorn Ridge to my left, and the Curve and its hallmark rock formations acting as an interactive backdrop spread out before me. I had seen photos of this place for years in TRAINS MAGAZINE, but to finally be here in person was quite a rush. I was on the very spot where the legendary rail-photographer Herb Sullivan made his most famous images, the single track swinging in a few hundred yards to my left, to curve sharply to the right and wind through the venerable, wind-eroded, tilted sandstone rock formations, finally to double-back on itself in a great horseshoe curve passing down in front of me.

Suddenly, whispering uphill through the songs of the early-morning desert birds and the gentle, singing breezes rustling the sage bushes, I hear a train approach.

I can tell it’s headed uphill from below by the sound of its laboring diesels, their deep rumbling creating a subsonic tremble in the air. Lucius Beebe articulated that feeling best:

"To stand poised at just the right angle, and the right-hand side. To include the power-reverse gear with the sun over one’s shoulder in the Cajon, listening to the thunder of exhaust of the helper and road-engine of the CHIEF, half a mile below, and know one has it, cold turkey, is one of the great delights of the business of living.”

I hope it’s a U.P. train; the yellow locomotives are so brilliant at dawn. It sounds big... a DD-35 maybe? Naaahh, too much to hope for, especially for a first-timer on the spur of the moment. Spectacular shots like that are well planned, and even staged. Ready now, it’s coming: around the rocks. . . it’s probably a Santa Fe drag. . . no, whoa, it’s yellow, it’s a Union Pacific, it’s... it’s...

OH, MY GOD.

DD-40AX. Number 6900.

The largest, most powerful diesel locomotive in the world!

The Saturn V of railroad motive power, No. 6900 is literally the first of its class, and it’s swinging around the curve to face the sun, passing across in front of me, its’ mighty image captured on Kodachrome in my camera forever. The sound of those DD’s is so powerful that you can feel the concussions in your chest as it approaches, applying some serious motive power to get around that curve and up the steep 2.2% grade. The smell of diesel exhaust and Inland Empire dust is clear and strong in my nose, and the train evokes memories of citrus groves and old boxcars on weed-choked industrial spurs. There’s nothing else in the world like standing next to a passing heavy freight train in Cajon Pass. The impression was so strong that years later, I would create a painting based on that moment. I call it ‘Unlimited Power At Sullivan’s Curve.’

"Unlimited Power At Sullivan's Curve"

Acrylic on Masonite by Pony R. Horton

I remember thinking, after the train trundled its way up the mountain and out of sight, “First train of the day and it’s the grand finale’. Forget it. Go home. You’ve seen it all, now.” Of course, I have not traversed more than 10 miles of strange mountain road on a pair of pliers and a lot of luck, just to quit after the first act, so I’m quickly on my way up the Pass again.

I finally arrive at Summit, and relax. Later, my friend Tim arrives, and we get down to some serious train-watching. Tim and I jury-rig a hand-throttle for the Daylight using coat hanger wire and my little crowbar as the pull-lever. The crowbar was stood on end, and I used it like a stick shift, pulling back to make the throttle open. That hand-throttle would take me about 300-odd miles that weekend!

That afternoon we made our way up to a little caboose we noticed was parked along the S.P. mainline, overlooking the Old Summit site. Fifty feet away we could hear the familiar hash-and-trash of a railroad dispatch radio. This was a train order station!

With a mixture of excitement and apprehension, I climbed the steps (which had been added-to, to reach the ground) and knocked on the door. To this day I can still see the partly rusted thermometer hanging over the porch.

The door opened.

Standing on the other side was a young man with curly, long, dark hair. He was the Second Trick Operator, and introduced himself with the unforgettable name of Royal Beauchamp (which he pronounced BO-camp).

Royal Beauchamp typing-up a train order.

(From a Super-8 film frame blow-up.)

He had a big, friendly Golden Retriever named Ashley. At this time we simply exchanged introductions, chatted briefly, and left him to his work. A meet was about to occur, and he was very busy. I shot some stills of him hooping-up the orders to the westbound S.P. freight on the main. We didn’t speak to any of the other operators that time, so this was my sole impression of Hiland for the next year.

Then, during early summer of 1977, my mother volunteered herself to the Synanon Foundation for help following a long period of injury at the hands of an abusive alcoholic husband, and subsequent prescription drug abuse (pain-killers), and I came home one day to find myself suddenly in an empty apartment and on my own at the age of 18, just turning 19.

Alone for the first time, I decided to try for a job with the Santa Fe, figuring it would be a fun career. My current “running partner”, Richard (R.C.) Chapman, joined me, and together we relocated to Summit, conveniently near the A.T.S.F. office in San Bernardino. We were willing to live in R.C.’s car for the length of time it took to get work and then housing. Well, those things didn’t happen, at least not the way we hoped or planned, but that summer would bring me back to Cajon Pass and O.S. Hiland. As a result, that lonely, beautiful, and unique location and its people and history would become woven into the fabric of my life forever. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a railfan, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Late that first night, after Royal had signed-out, we met the Third Trick Operator. He was an outwardly crusty, middle-aged, dyed-in-the-wool railroader named Sherman Gooch. He was as different from Royal Beauchamp as I am from Presidents Bush.

At least, outwardly. But inside, political, social, ideological differences notwithstanding, he had a heart of gold as big as a locomotive. He was, also, a member of the International Order of Foresters, a benevolence society similar to the Moose Lodge.

He invited us in, and even allowed me to set-up my Sony reel-to-reel stereo recorder. He showed us how the system worked. We explored the entire caboose. At the conductor’s area was a desk/shelf, a typing table, a file cabinet, and a built-in couch on the other side. Upon the desk sat a railroad two-way radio, train order pads, and assorted sundry office supplies. Above the desk was a breadbox-sized panel showing a schematic of the Hiland Siding and Mainline. Included in the panel, which was built by Union Switch & Signal, was a signal indicator/anunciatior with two “quarter-turn” rotary toggles for aligning the turnouts at either end of the 7500-foot Hiland Siding, and a switch for illuminating the “T.O.” signals outside.

There was an S.P. calendar, and also a calendar illustrated with railroad paintings by Howard Fogg gracing the walls. On the bulkhead by the door hung several Y-shapedtrain order hoops on long handles.

Just beyond the work area was an electric drinking fountain (the water was great), and an old coal-burning stove. The back porch held an unused water closet, and had a seating alcove. The cupola was to become my favorite place, well-padded and comfortable, with a pastoral, relaxing view of the entire Summit Valley!

Throughout the caboose, the windows that had not been boarded-up were covered with a heavy, transparent plastic film for insulation.

For the rest of the wee hours we sat, talked, listened, and got to know each other.

At one point near dawn, Gooch put out a train order whose string was cut too short. The conductor in the caboose of the downhill freight missed the string, and the train rolled off down the grade, minus the conductors’ orders! Gooch came off the stairs running, which was a sight considering his bulk. He grabbed the order from the hoop, jumped into his little Toyota pickup, and tore-off down the roadbed, gravel flying from his tires. He chased the train down, and hand-delivered the orders to the conductor! Meanwhile the anunciatior was buzzing, the radio was squawking, and I was laughing my butt off! R.C was snoring, having fallen asleep hours ago.

After a week or so of nothing but waiting and train-watching, R.C. went back to L.A., and I was joined by my girlfriend (at that time). Jody. She and I subsequently re­named Royal’s dog “Ashley Roachclip of the Jefferson Hairpie” after a remark in a Cheech & Chong routine.

For the next month or so, Jody, Royal and I functioned as a unit. As soon as Royal came on the Second Trick at 3PM, Jody and I materialized on the doorstep. Royal, I, and most of my friends were what Chard Walker, the famous Summit train order operator from 1947 to 1967, called “A whole new generation of train-watchers, who never knew steam railroading.” Our hair was long, slogan T-shirts and jeans were our fashions, country-to-rock was our music. We drank cokes instead of coffee, we smoked pot instead of drinking alcohol, and we anticipated train movements using short-wave scanners rather than smoke columns or semaphore signals.

Today, should you happen upon any gathering of railfans under the age of 45, most likely the electronic soundtrack of railroad radios will be punctuated the electronic bleeps and MIDI tunes and chirps and tweets coming from a gaggle of handheld devices and augmented by voices arguing over the latest reality TV show. This is today’s idea of how to have fun, and it certainly seems very different from when I was there.

Jody, Royal, and I would adjourn to the cupola of the 1202, after the proper procedures of shift change had been observed. The dispatch radio would be cranked-up good and loud, the anunciators would be on, so no train could come within several miles without us knowing about it. Royal would play his guitar, and we would sing Jim Croce or Paul McCartney songs for the rest of the afternoon. I’ll never forget feeling the dry, pure desert air, and the visual beauty of the sunset behind my shoulder, casting a warm orange glow over the Summit Valley. Occasionally, a Santa Fe or U.P. freight would pass below, adding its own music to the gentle, breezy dusk. The ruddy light would paint the spongy texture of the sagebrush and manzanita leaves a rusted olive drab, and the land would bathe us in the gentle, summery scent of sweetgrass and dust, with the occasional tang of diesel oil.

What more could anyone ask?

Paul Simon was right: I’ll always remember that time as my own Kodachrome Summer.

At that time, I had a cat, a Main Coon named Wibzen (don’t ask) who lived with us, too. He usually stayed in the car, but occasionally we brought him into the caboose. However, we all usually cleared out by the time Gooch came on at midnight. Gooch didn’t care for Wibzen, and Jody didn’t care for Gooch. She and the cat would sleep in the car, while Gooch and I sat and talked.

Once, on a weekend trip back to L.A., we drove off, thinking Wibzen was in his usual place under the seats. Upon arrival, he was nowhere to be found. I went crazy with worry. That cat and I were inseparable. Upon return to Hiland three days later, the instant I parked the Daylight next to the 1202, I heard a distinct yowl. Upon further investigation, I found my feline baby sitting under the caboose, atop the truck assembly! How he managed, I’ll never know, and as I spotted him he looked like a pair of huge green eyes with a fluffy tail attached!

Eventually, though, he got his “revenge” on us. I happened to have a couple of Super-8 movie cameras with me (these use actual 8mm film, not videotape), and I loved to make special effects. And so, using an HO-Scale caboose together with a full-scale cat and authentic Cajon Pass scenery, Royal Beauchamp, Wibzen, and The Gooch Caboose made their big-screen debut in “The Wapness!” The story was simple: A young woman (Jody) is taking a walk outside of the caboose one fine day. Inside is the operator, blissfully unaware of the horror about to strike. Suddenly, the ground begins to rumble and shake, and. . . whuzzat!? A giant... Cat?! Sure enough, and it’s coming closer... it’s gonna attack! It’s looming over the caboose. . . it’s bigger than an Imperial walker. . . Good Lord, it must be a scale hundred-and-twenty feet tall! It’s raising its paw, look-out... “WAP!!!”

Super-8 Frame blow up from The Wapness. The caboose itself is matted-in to this version of the shot.

The paw strikes, sending the operators flying across the caboose amid a shower of debris! Then... the film ran out. Those old film cartridges only held about 3-1/2 minutes of footage, and there was NO sound. And we never do get to find out what happens to the Caboose or the victims of The Wapness!

Another film—related memory was created one hot day that summer, as I sat in the shade under the caboose reading, for the first time, Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of a new movie called “STAR WARS.” I’ll never forget sitting on the short piece of rail that the caboose sat on, reading this incredible story, and thinking ‘How the hell are they gonna stage and shoot all this?’ Little did I know that a year later I’d be working for one of the companies that created some of the film’s signature effects!

One memory which may someday find itself in a movie was the time I fell asleep up in the cupola, and awoke to find myself down on the floor at the bottom of the ladder. As I dazedly opened my eyes, my first sight was a large boot clomping down a few inches from my face! I started to get myself up while Gooch (the owner of the boots) insisted, “No, no, no, it’s OK, stay where you are.” I’m still trying to figure that one out. . .

Eventually, I moved back to L.A., to find work and real shelter. Unfortunately, Wibzen never made it back with me. He got out of the car one night in the desert, and lost his way. He was never found again. Needless to say, I was devastated. I really loved that cat. But, I had to move on, and get a real life. And from then on I had to be content with only visiting the 1202 every few months.

I heard later from Gooch that Royal had suffered a tragic motorcycle accident. While going home on the mountain road to Wrightwood, he lost control of his bike (probably on a patch of black ice) and left the pavement. His wife, who was riding on the back, died at the scene. But Royal managed to survive until he was found about six hours later, his head smashed open, and in a coma.

When I was next able to visit Hiland, I went to the hospital in San Bernardino to visit (this was months later), and they wouldn’t let me see him. He was in very bad condition.

I can still remember Gooch, during a caboose visit more than a year later, saying, “He’s still out of it. He won’t be back.”

Tim Johnson and I spent New Years’ Eve 1978 to ‘79 at Hiland. Gooch gave me some memorabilia, including a rulebook update, a pad of blank train orders, and the Hiland calendar. The calendar is special, as it has the days marked with important events. Like when it rained.

A heavy drag came through that evening, Westbound, with a pusher. They cut the pusher off, parked it, and gathered inside the caboose to warm up. Being a part of the moment, I could almost imagine how it was for the old-timers at Summit! About two months later, a heavy (for Southern California) snowstorm hit the area. While visiting Hiland, my friend and I were welcomed in by George Lichtke, the daytime operator who lived in the nearby mobile home which was parked on the site where the DESCANSO once sat. As we got reacquainted, I glanced up at the wall above the couch, and was very surprised to see a little scrap of paper with “film credits” from The Wapness was still there! That delighted me more than a solid chocolate locomotive. These people actually considered events involving me and my friends to be a part of the history of this train order station, and I’m still warmed and humbled to this day by that.

(Above) The 1202 in the snow, winter 1979.

(Below) Pony in the cupola of the 1202, winter 1979.

Both images blown-up from Super-8mm film frames.

It was quite a feeling to sit back up in my old spot in the cupola, leaning out with my movie camera, catching an eastbound freight rumbling over the snow-covered summit. With the same camera I chased poor George around the inside of the caboose until he got embarrassed and started to crack-up. Later that trip my camera and I went over to Victorville and pestered Chard Walker while he worked! Chard was another of those wonderful human beings who makes you feel as though you’re friends, even if you’re just good acquaintances. I am most fortunate that he had so happily shared his recollections of Old Summit with me on several occasions.

Hiland, October 1979

My final visit to O.S. Hiland took place in late 1979. October, I think. I was traveling with R.C., his friend Bob, and my latest friend Dale Darr. Together we camped—out at Summit, dug up artifacts (insulators, bits of shingle from the building fragments, spikes from the old roadbed, etc.) and visited Gooch. He had a pair of rather interesting companions; two live, large Praying Mantises which perched on the S.P. radio and ate other bugs. I audio-taped that last visit, as I had many others, and I had the foresight to photograph the location from all four sides, using good Ektachrome Professional film. One great shot I got is of the whole bunch of us, including Sherman Gooch (minus the Mantises) and George Lichtke, gathered in front of the 1202. Except for Royal Beauchamp, the gang’s all there.

I call it “The Caboose Alumni.”

The Caboose Alumni, October 1979

(L-to-R) Pony Horton, Sherman Gooch, Bob, Richard (R.C.) Chapman, Dale Darr, George Litchke (on the porch).

It’s said that the only real constant, is change.

We saw it coming a long way off. The shiny new block signals at the end of the Hiland Siding, covered with burlap and turned away from the track, as they weren’t yet activated. The heavy wooden spool of industrial signal cable waiting to be installed. The three big letters that spelled-out “death” to the train order operating system: C.T.C. Centralized Traffic Control.

By February of 1980, trains over the Palmdale-Colton Cutoff would be governed by a few people in the main yard at West Colton. To use Sherman Gooch’s own words, “A sad end to a good job.”

O.S. Hiland was officially closed in 1980, ending the last vestige of old-style railroading through Cajon Pass. Gooch and George Lichtke went the way of Chard Walker, manning other railroad functions elsewhere. And I was told by some railroad workers that Royal Beauchamp finally died in the hospital, having never regained consciousness.

Pony and Gooch at Gooch's home in Hesperia, 1986

Turns out, they were WRONG! I found out, thanks to this story, that Royal made a recovery, and despite some very real physical challenges, was happily living in Arizona with his family. I spoke on the phone with him in 2013, and it was great to catch-up!

R.C. visited Hiland a year or two later, around 1981. The 1202 was still there, but injured and sick, having been heavily vandalized. He reported to me what he found, and added, “You don’t want to go back there. You couldn’t stand to see it like that.”

So I didn’t. I wish now that I had.

Then, in 1983, the now-famous US Festival happened in Devore. I, and my then-girlfriend Eva (who stuck with me for 30 years, and suddenly passed away in 2009) went with two other friends, and we had a ball. As we left, I convinced them to let me show them where it had all been. I had no idea what to expect. The caboose restored by S.P. for occasional use? A rusted, ruined hulk...? As we drove up the little dirt access road, we swung over the S.P. tracks, and there was... nothing. Not a trace to indicate what had once been, and transpired. The only sound was the emptiness of the desert breeze over the hills.

A sound that echoed into my soul, and remains to this day.

Pony and R.C. pose on the platform that once held the Descanso's headlight, at Hiland; Pony in 2009, and R.C. in the late 1980's.

Summit Station lasted 60-odd years. O.S. Hiland’s caboose barely made four years. Royal Beauchamp is gone. Sherman Gooch died years ago. Even Chard Walker is now on The Other Side, his existence remembered by a small cross marker at Hiland, close to where The Descanso sat.

But on a quiet night, around 3:00 AM, with my cats sound asleep and only the owls outside, all I need to do is reach up to my stereo equipment, insert the proper cassette, and hit “Play.”

I can still hear the sound of my feet clomping hollowly up the steps, the squeaky door opening, the static of S.P. Dispatch pouring out, and Gooch’s hearty “What can I do you out of?” ringing through my memory.

I only wish more of my friends could’ve experienced it with me.

The End