Trains come off both the UP on the south end of Mojave, and off the BNSF line to Barstow near the Route 14 overpass on the southside of Mojave. They remain together, sharing the track to Bakersfield, where they again split onto their own rails. Technically, Tehachapi is UP trackage but it appears that BNSF runs most trains. Weather is generally good in the Tehachapi area, but if not, keep in mind that Mojave is desert territory, and the UP line south, and BNSF line southeast to Barstow are likely to have sun even when the Tehachapi Mountains are socked in. Action is heavy on this line, from 30-50 train movements per day.
Trains can have large lashups of power and many have mid-train pushers, or rear pushers.
Pusher movements allow some additional views whenever the freights get spread thin. Activity is constant somewhere on the mountain and this piece of track needs a great deal of maintenance. The railroad will often create a work window in which a section of the line is taken completely out of service for several hours. In many other locations this might spell doom for a fan, but these work windows will back up the action so that when the line opens, there is likely to be a fleet of trains needing to get through. And, these trains are generally not held in any far away yard but move towards the plug, one passing track at a time, allowing many trains to be photographed in locations on either side of the trackwork window.