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There's No Place Like Cajon
Summit of Cajon Pass, California circa 1977 
Ok, it's a bad pun, but Cajon Pass is certainly a unique railroad location
in many respects, not the least of which are the convergence of three major railroads, the complex terrain and the track and highway
alignments. Numerous well-known railroad photographs and videos have been taken in and near the Pass over its long history. And, of
course, Cajon Pass is the location of the renowned Sullivan's Curve.
The Pass
The dramatic picture above, taken by Clark Bauman, frames the majestic, snow covered San Gabriel Mountains in the background. With the UP locomotives in the foreground, the long, straight stretch of track (rare in the Pass) and the knowledge that the picture was taken about 1977 near the summit of Cajon Pass, we can determine the photo location with some precision. We enter "Cajon" in the Terraserver Name Place Search. The first place in the list is Cajon Summit. This obvious choice takes us right to where we want to be. We enlarge the image display to Medium size and zoom-in to the two-meter level. 
There's no need yet for the topographic map unless we're unsure of the summit area location. A few minutes comparing the clues in the
photograph with the aerial view, a quick check for the summit marker on the map, and we're ready to place the camera position about
1000 yards east of the summit.
The Aerial Details
Better Print-Outs 
If you suddenly get the urge to print out that aerial image or topographic map section, don't immediately
reach for your browser's print button. If you use just the browser print function, the entire browser window content will print out. It
will likely require a second page, and you may still not get a complete image. At best, you will probably have to do some cutting and
taping to put together a full image. Using the Terraserver's Print function will give you much better results. It will save you
time, some printer paper and maybe a little ink too.
When you are ready to print out an image, click the Terraserver Print function link located above the
image display area. The server will prepare an image print page formatted for a neat 8½ x11 print-out of the entire image with no
extraneous browser window content. The printout will include the image location, date and scale information. In preparing the print
page, the server will insert additional image tiles above and below the image. This is helpful if you are not able to position the
entire subject vertically within the image display area. Set your printer margins accordingly.
Relief Map We have looked at two image styles - Aerial Photo (Image) and Topographic Map (Topo). There is a third image style - Relief. The relief map is beautiful, intriguing and interesting to look at in its own right. It is, however, not particularly well suited to searching out specific locations; the scale of the relief map is just too large. The zoom range is 16-kilometers down to 1-kilometer (16km, 8km, 4km, 2km, 1km). When you switch to the relief map, instead of the pixels on your screen representing square meters, they will represent square kilometers. When you switch from Relief Map mode to Image mode you will be put in 64-meter resolution (128-meter resolution in Topo mode) regardless of the relief map scale you were in. The relief map will, however, provide a excellent three-dimensional view of the terrain in the region of your subject. This can be helpful in understanding the terrain depicted in the aerial and topographic views, so it should not be overlooked. |
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