Railfanning The BNSF Bakersfield Sub

My wife and I took a few days in Northern California last week, and it's always a fun challenge to find different ways to get up there with the possibility of railfanning. One of my more recent standbys has been the BNSF Bakersfield sub, which I can reach from Los Angeles by driving over Tehachapi, itself often interesting (although work windows and traffic make it unpredictable). But the obvious railfan route north from Bakersfield, California 99, is a freeway with heavy traffic, and the UP line is often not visible from the highway.

The other choice is California Route 43, which parallels the BNSF Valley route on a two-lane lightly trafficked highway, with the railroad close by and visible for much of the route. The BNSF line is also busier than the UP line, and BNSF trains outnumber UP trains on Tehachapi. Beyond that, the BNSF line hosts Amtrak state-supported trains between Port Chicago and Bakersfield.Last week we picked up a northbound unit grain train and paced it for much of the way between Wasco and Hanford:

The train was doing 50-60 mph, but from the photo, you can see there's very little traffic on this route, so there was no problem getting stuck behind someone driving slowly or having to worry about speed demons tailgating me.

Another issue in California is that the scenery in places like Cajon, Tehacnhapi, or the surf line along the coast can be distracting. The San Joaquin Valley has far fewer distractions, which means you can learn something while railfanning. For instance, the unit grain train we were pacing was made up of 100 identical covered hoppers of a type I'd never specifically noticed, like CITX 701712

Here is CEFX 201342:

These cars turn out to be TrinityRail 4-bay cylindrical covered hoppers built about 2006-7. As far as I can tell, no models are available in any scale. There were cars from TILX and AOKX in this train as well. Unit grain trains on BNSF serving cattle and poultry facilities in the Valley are common. I'm now hoping someone comes out with a model of these cars in either HO or N, although N would be a better choice for unit trains.

The BNSF line between Barstow and Los Angeles has a dedicated pool of locos, so there's a sameness to what you normally see on Cajon Pass or in Commerce. You're more likely to see rare locos on the Valley line. The middle loco on the unit train we paced was BNSF 617:

617 is an AC4400C4m, one of 20 9-44CWs rebuilt by GE in 2014 as AC locos with A1A trucks like those on the later BNSF ES44C4s. You can see that it kept its early style side cab windows in the rebuild. While Norfolk Southern is rebuilding a lot of 9-44CWs into AC locos, it looks like BNSF has done no more than the 20 from 2014.

The Valley line is single track with CTC and sidings, although the passenger speed limit is 79 mph. Thus you see a lot of signals, along with evidence of busy dispatchers. This adds interest, too.