Back To The San Joaquin Valley

Last week I made it back to the Ssn Joaquin Valley after nearly a year. Poking around, I found a few quirky things. A new sign at the San Joaquin Valley Railroad's headquarters in Exeter:

I took a quick trip to the SJVRR's Oil City branch just north of Bakersfield. Not much to see. This is the Tricor Refinery at the end of the line:

I also had alook at the SJVR's line from Exeter to Fresno via Reedley. I found this very traditional industry at Ivanhoe:

The SJVR serves a good many prosperous industries, but very few are single trackside facilities like this one. More often, they're very large, highly secure, fenced off, and hard to photograph.

The prize for quirky this trip goes to a strange facility made from old shipping containers along the UP main line at Famoso.

This seems to load material into trucks that's delivered in old wood chip cars:

Nearby was a new-looking Shuttlewagon at Western Milling in Famoso: