Modeling the Southern Pacific in the Black Hole; The Sunset Route from Indio to Tucson: Final closure on the status of the Somerton Branch?

So the other day I was driving by and noticed a Union Pacific work crew working in the area where the Somerton Branch begins. For those not completely familiar with the layout of the tracks at the (railroad) west end of Yuma for the last few years there have been three tracks in the area of the passenger platform and the old yard office. At the end of the platform there was a crossover between the track closest to the yard office (true west) and the middle track. After this crossover the closest track became the Somerton Branch and the middle and far tracks merge to cross the bridge. A return visit today once again yielded a work crew in the area but in one spot where there should have been a crossover and three tracks there were only two tracks. It appears that after nearly three decades of not being used by the railroad and an embargo on the line the Union Pacific has decided to finally officially abandon the line (which has been unofficially abandoned since the tourist Yuma Valley Railroad ceased operations) and severed its link to the mainline. While this is not a complete surprise as there are many segments of this branch that have been removed for road improvements further down the line but most of these were south of the power plant and desalinization plant which both seemed to maintain rail spurs although if I recall correctly the line into the desalinization plant was cut the last time I drove by the area taking that industry offline. An interesting side note is that the desalinization plant was constructed well after the time period that most people give for SP ceasing operations on the Somerton Branch. This is also an interesting move because when the Arizona Department of Transportation repaved Fourth Avenue a year or so ago they were required to replace the tracks crossing Fourth Avenue albeit with abandoned signs under the cross bucks. One would think if the line was truly abandoned and was going to be severed from the mainline this unnecessary time and expense would not have been taken. So it appears that the Somerton Branch is now officially history however as this is a key area in my planned phase one of construction I will be making repeated visits and keeping an eye on this. below are some photos taken today unfortunately as far as cell phone photos go they are pretty bad lighting wise. they are also taken from the opposite perspective that I had described the tracks from earlier.