Amazing US freight train video from 1987

[Sacto1985]

YouTube member BrokenKnuckleVideo posted this really amazing video of freight train action at the famous Tehachapi Loop east of Bakersfield, CA in March 1987:

 

 

Note the Santa Fe manifest freight train with a very mixed consist (there's even trailer on flat car (TOFC) fright cars in teh consist!) stopping on the Loop's siding, then a Southern Pacific loaded coal train with 15 locomotives slowly going up the Loop, then after the ascending train passes, the Santa Fe freight train finishes its trip through the Loop. Note that back in 1987, these trains still used cabooses. We'll never see anything like that again here in California.

[nah00]

How do they break up the coal train? I'm assuming there's a decent sized yard at the top where they take the pushers out but I've never seen them in the middle of a unit train before, everything in PA just always ran with headers and trail locos on the end. Then again the Appalachians aren't as steep as the Rockies or Sierra Nevada, they're a lot older of a mountain range.