Fascinating! The quality is poor but it's still a unique historical record. I used to hike along the tracks in the gorge a lot back in the late '70s and early '80s.

@Randy - not sure where you got this film but it was taken pre-1981. I worked on the SD&AE from 2/81 thru ~6/83. The first part of my time there was spent up in Campo (going to Plaster City and Tijuana) and then later on when the San Diego Trolley came into existence I worked from the border to the yard and back. I recognize the Campo Station Master Terry (can't recall his last name) but not the crew. Don't know who was running the train but it definitely wasn't "Brownie" (the engineer during my 2-1/2 years there. Seeing this film brings back lots of memories from my time working for the SD&AE, all of them interesting in one way or another. You really had to sit up and railroad when going through the gorge due to all the dangers of that stretch of track. Falling rocks (boulders) on blind corners, mountain goats, fires, etc. made for an interesting job. All my still photos/prints are long gone otherwise I'd make a collage out of them and post them here. Thanks for putting up this film.

Don't know much about this line, but your estimate year of 1983 would put the film right around the point of shutdown by Southern Pacific. Perhaps that was the point of taking the cab ride: the photographer and his companions knew the handwriting for cessation of operations was on the wall. Impossible (for me, at least) to tell given the footage's low-resolution quality, but it seems there were quite a few people along the right-of-way at various locations who may have been taking pictures of the train. Perhaps they also knew the end was near. Neat seeing the remains of wrecks along the line. This must have been one dangerous stretch of railroad, especially in steam days before the advent of radio communication. Even being able to reach authorities, help coming to the middle of nowhere would still take some time. Scary. Thanks for posting, what may very well be, this one-of-a-kind footage of "The Impossible Railroad."

Wow. They ran quite a long train on that line back then, even under Kyle RY.

Men that’s long ago the bridge and tunnels were fresh back then but now land sides and other things the old rail line needs ton of work if they want it to get it working for example making the tunnels wider and bigger trains just get longer bigger taller.

Крутая и красивая железная дорога.

Wow, very cool. So I see a combination of SP and is it SD@AE engines? I hiked down the walked the whole line from the 8 to Dos Cabezas in 1979. One of the guys at the end looks kind of like Michael Reading

Am guessing this is heading west correct?

I just uploaded this clip of the SD&A Ry from early 20th century you might find of interest kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hbZ5nrybvODDkp8.html&ab_channel=BruceHolder

Cool footage! But hard to watch, with all the bouncing and scene cuts.