English: About an hour and a half drive east of San Diego, on an unused stretch of track that is the eastern end of the old Desert Line, we found the only tangible evidence that PIR has done anything to build a railroad. The owners of PIR took $450,000 of investors' money and bought three locomotives from Idaho, Northern, and Pacific Railroad and had them towed there, where they've sat ever since. The only problem with them is: they don't work.

The Pacific Imperial Railroad leadership collapsed in 2015 amid revelations of fraud and the discovery of several shell corporations setup by the management.

It was reported that these locomotives had the wrong gear ratio for climbing the grades on the Desert line.