The work the
iron demands.
The Peavine is the former Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe route south from Flagstaff through Prescott and Skull Valley and down to the Phoenix basin — a railroad that drops nearly 7,000 feet over a course of roughly 150 miles, negotiating terrain so difficult that the AT&SF called it the Peavine because it wound through the mountains like a climbing vine. Now operated as the BNSF Phoenix Subdivision, it carries aggregates, chemicals, and intermodal traffic through some of the most visually arresting railroad country in Arizona.
Skull Valley is where the serious photography happens. The line curves through high desert grassland with the Bradshaw Mountains as backdrop, running on grades that force slow speeds and visible effort from the consist. The old section house at Prescott Junction still stands. The Agua Fria River crossing offers structure photography. And below Mayer, as the line begins its final descent toward the Phoenix plain, the cactus forest closes in on both sides of the right-of-way in a way that reads completely differently depending on the time of year and the quality of light.