The Wx4 Dome O' Foam

New Arrivals, 2024

for locations of items added to Wx4 2012-2023, go HERE

4-30-24:

Historical Maps & Timetables: 3 new pages

"Baggage Smasher", definition

Wx4 Looks at the Particulars of Baggage Smashing

Smokey, the Dog Formed by a Committee
Norfollk Southern dredges up dreadful posters

@Willits, CA, c1961-70

Longview, Portland & Northern, Southern Div.

Held Over! "Station or Depot"?

Held Over! "San Jose Line Change"

Photo: 1985 photo of SP XW skirting Willow Glen

Photo: Peninsular Ry. Line Car #14's predecessor

1932 SP San Jose Yard map

re-designed SP in San Jose & Vicinity index page

further intelligence re questions about SP's c.1986 Monterey Road derailment

Miscellaneous SP photos

SP Dumbarton Bridge Construction photos

ca.1915 Santa Fe Around the Bay photos

5-9-24

Puzzle or [SP] Allegory? You Make the Call

5-14-24

Motor Camping in olden times

comment

see Some Larger Items, below

addition to RRer Terms Disambiguated:

an in-depth investigative report

On last year's front page, but images later disappeared. We suspect a NS RR conspiracy.

new B&W, color photos of c.1961 excursion

new photos and intelligence re CBRL years

further (artificial) intelligence upon this pressing matter; page right, below
added photos & info to Wx4's ad-on to recent SPHTS Trainline article - scroll down a bit
former single track in 1935 line change

added to A Bio of a Humble Little Line Car

higher resolution replacement

no longer causes vertigo

Engineer Lee Barnet no longer with us
addtions

1930's Commute 4-6-2's

right column, below

right column, below

bottom of page

below Some Larger Items

Dateline 4-30-2024:

Yep, it's been 60 years since I first hauled a cheap, point and click camera down to SP's San Jose Roundhouse with the seemingly novel idea of photographing trains. Unfortunately, my first railroad photo was pretty crappy:

So, should you allow that the intervening 38 years until 2002 was "preparatory time", well, there you go...

Otherwise, after a lenghty unplanned winter recess, Staff decided to do some major virtual housekeeping and digital rearrangement of furniture. Our list of New Arrivals is consequentually shorter than usual. As should be obvious, Wx4 webpages are not composed of cheap-looking Ikea-ish templates downloaded from the likes of Build-A-Plain-Vanilla-Website.com.

Instead we lovingly craft each page by hand from select virtual hardwoods and high quality Naugahyde (see below). As sucky as you might think some of our recent pages have been, they hold no candle to the visual offenses committed upon you viewers by our oldest stuff (Yes?). Unfortunately, webpage reconstruction - good or bad - consumes an enormous amount of time that we otherwise could have devoted towards brand new items, so well, there you go.- E.O. 4-30-24


	`The Ernie Kiesel Collection of Southern Pacific Photographs at History San Jose - Wx4 is proud to host this genealogical treasure of 300+ photos that once lined locomotive engineer change room walls in San Francisco circa 1900-1980. Engineers and their locos are the main subjects, but other crafts and officers are also represented, as are wrecks and other historical moments. Includes a biographical index to known people.`
	`S``outhern` `P``acific Railroaders' Pages` `- We are fond of saying that, "The best part of railroading is the people," and these pages are devoted to them: biographies and stories; photos and videos; time books and rosters. Our pages and the Kiesel Collection nicely compliment each other.`
	`52 Years in the Shops - Speaking of SP rails, during his notably lengthy employ as a machinist at Bayshore beginning in 1929, Fred Boland wrote a fair number of stories about his work - and took a lot of photos, some as early as 1927. Along with these are more than 100 steam loco appliance & etc. blueprints that he rescued from the dumpster after dieselization. Fred's son, Walter, has kindly contributed copies his father's collected works to Wx4.`
	`Historical Maps & Timetables - Effective this edition, we have` `two new pages``: - page 12, courtesy of cards84664: Northeast regional, subuurban TT's, 1960's-80's - Combined SP Maps & TT's: convenient, one stop shopping mirroring all of Wx4's SP offerings``AND` `for ease of access, we have folded our Rule Book, SP employee rosters amd Miscellaneous Documents pages into the Maps & Timetables section, including Allen Stanley's new page devoted to ca.WWI ICC Valuation summaries for Western shortlines,and ICC locomotive inspection annual reports, 1912-1965`
	Taking Stock of William Jennings Holman and His Preposterous Locomotive - Much of what you know about one of the more famous stock schemes of the 19th Century, The Holman Locomotive, and its perpetrator is wrong; is the product of what Wx4 labels as "Internet Cut & Paste History". Our 30,000 word magnus opus sets things straight, by delving into his life as a long time confidence man and inventor who demonstrated remarkable resiliency after repeated failures with a rainbow of improbable schemes. Also, check our our homage to him.
	`Wreck of the New Almaden Mixed - In 1902, this South Pacific Coast narrow gauge train fell victim to a cornfield meet with a standard gauge SP engine in the fog at Moulton, on the three rail SPC main near Campbell. This lengthy piece thoroughly covers the affair and includes previously unpublished photos. Coincidentally, Moulton was the namesake of the man who had pressured SPC into adding a third rail several years earlier. His biography is also included.`
	`California & Oregon Coast RR, incl. Hobbs, Wall & Co. and other Del Norte County RR's - The lengthy title befits this page, which first appeared in Wx4's earliest days, and and has since benefitted from several contributors. Here you'll find lots of photos and maps of these obscure little railways, as well as rosters that correct errors found in print sources.`
	Paducah's Boneyard and the Fate of IC's Last E-units - Classic Trains magazine's Spring, 2023 issue features "Firing on the Illinois Central in 1969", an article describing Mike Einhorn's brief, but scrapes-laden career as a student fireman. Mike's experiences went a long way in sideways explanation of conditions and attitudes that caused IC to have so many wrecks, something we discovered 15 years ago while producing our Paducah page. We figured then that IC wrecks turned fully 16% (10) of its E-Units into scrap metal. Otherwise, lots of photos of a wide variety of IC/foreign units.
	Southern Pacific Train # 308 w/ Engine #1714 at Willows, CA, 1910-11 Years back we were gifted with a photo showing SP train #308 and crew standing at an unknown location. Of course we wanted to know where and when, so after we placed a plea on Wx4, the late Ed Workman determined the approximate date of the photo, while the late Tony Johnson was able to figured out that the train was the Hamilton [City] Freight and Passenger pausing at Willows. From there, we were able to determine the exact spot on a Sanborn map where the engine was sitting. We sorely miss Ed and Tony.

Since it came out in 2022, Staff has spent a condiderable amount of time pouring over Ken Harrison's magnificent book, Southern Pacific Maintenance of Way Equipment, 1895-September 11, 1996. The amount of information within its covers and accompanying CD is staggering, and its enormous contribution to SP history is incalculable.

This caused us to realize that one of Wx4's extremely modest maintenance of way offerings has been hidden in our back pages for two decades: Earl Hanson and His SP Ditcher Gang, Circa 1916-1936 (see above photo). Earl and his gang worked all over the Portland and Shasta Divisions, including a considerable amount of time spent prepping the Cascade Cutoff right of way. Its photos show an interesting transition in technology over those two decades, and gives some context about its use by nomadic track gangs.

The Leaning Tower of Newhall, ca. 1979 - San Jose Yardmaster Russ Danley gets his bell rung,
then my train almost does likewise

Wx4 Orphans' Home:

Movie buffs label old silent films with no known extant copies as "orphans", a term that Wx4 has adopted to apply to presumably lost employee timetables (ETT's). Thus, it is an occasion of remark when an orphan comes to the light of day, as is the case of the venerable 1879 SP timetable seen here. Not many pre-1890 SP ETT's are known to have survived.Time Table No. 17 came to the light of day only recently, when a fellow named John LePrince his copy to Southern California Railway Museum's archives at Paris. Volunteer archivist Terry Salmans in turn scanned it and kindly forwarded copies to Wx4. Thanks to all!

In this regard, Staff is still searching for the Holy Grail of SP timetables, a copy of an early 1880's Mojave-Needles 'Colorado Division', which was was sold to Atlantic & Pacific before it ever was completed. The same thing goes for a company produced public timetable. Neither is known to exist, alsthough you can find schedules in period Official Guides.

Note: More SP/CP and subsidiaries timetables of similar vintage are located in Wx4's NEW Combined SP Maps & Timetables page.

(click on image to download)

	NEW 5-14-24: Motor Camping in olden timesxxxxxxx
	For reasons of preference or economy, a number of we railfans resort to overnight camping during train chasing expeditions. Of course, these days "camping" means lounging in your REI trousseau inside an air conditioned Airstream at the KOA whilst watching train videos on a 72" flatscreen TV. Anything less is "roughing it". Extremist roughing it - backpacking - is omitted from this discussion because I have previously found that lufgging a 50 pound backpack places severe limitations upon one's ability to pace trains. A hundred years ago, roughing it was the norm, since nobody had as yet come up with anything much better. Auto or motor camping it was then called, and this was the only realistic option for travelers who could not afford to stay in full blown hotels. Only a few dozen roadside auto courts featuring individual bungalows were in existence nationally in the early 1920's, while the first motel, reputedly the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo, did not appear until 1925. The only common overnight venues to be found were public and private auto camps. By then, they were nearly ubiquitous in small and medium size towns' city parks, and they were well attended, given the paucity of alternatives. This brings us to Motor Camping (click on title for a 34mb PDF), a 340 page tome devoted to the minutest details of the auto camping art as things stood in 1923. It covers the whole gamut of camping options from economy to deluxe (such as it was), and offers considerable practical wisdom to novices. For example, the authors devote a fair amount of verbiage to "Poison Antidotes", where they advise that, "It is the children that most frequently get poisoned…" Cleanliness is offered as a fundamental preventative, and to this end they offer up their own custom cleaning tonic composed of carbon tetrachloride, chloroform and gasoline, but they fail to include an antidote to the deadly concoction, probably because when ingested, death likely was instantaneous.
	The book's version of 'roughing it" was pretty literal: plant your sleeping bag next to your car, and should rain develop, simply roll underneath. (My advice: don't attempt this with your '93 Toyota Corolla.) In this regard, some of the coziest sleeping bags to be had were insulated with asbestos
		Moving up the food chain a bit, the book discloses a minimalist kitchen arrangement (above right) along with an all-encompassing setup that was "sufficient" to serve the needs of an Iowa farmer, his wife and three children for a 1700 mile trip (left). Although farmers had a reputation for plain living, this sparse arrangement likely came out of necessity, for the family would have occupied the entirety of the interior space in their (presumed) Model T, meaning that the gear was stowed on the running boards. The resultant overloading would have set up a delicate balancing act that required serious study of passenger and gear placement in order to avoid overturning the high centered, crudely suspended cars of the day. People of greater means by then were towing what was called a motor bungalow - a pop-up tent on a trailer. From right top to bottom, these could range from the no frills Motorbungalow Jr. to the two bedroom Chenango to the rather involved Auto-Kamp. The letter "K" commanded some popularity, another example being the Kampkook gasoline stove (similar to later Coleman Stove).
		The ultimate pop-up may have been the Motorbungalow, the big brother of Jr. It featured a 4'x7' floor space, 9'x12' room containing a kitchenette with icebox, loads of shelves and an emergency water tank Even more upscale was a class of custom built bungalows that were the primeval equivalent of today's Sprinter van. At left is one built atop a REO chassis in the "Pullman" style. Another popular arrangement was the "Foldaway Bed for Ford [Model T] Sedans" (right). Beyond functioning as a bedroom, it could also be utilized as a dressing room and primping parlour.
This all resonates with me, because I am elderly enough to have experienced the tail end of the golden age of auto camping. In the 1950's my family held its annual vacations in the Sierra Nevada at a campground still frequented by motor bungalows (not a house trailer to be seen!), although our means were so modest that our experience verged on "roughing it". First, my father would spend two days rearranging items in the trunk of our '48 Pontiac sufficiently to allow a mightily slammed trunk lid to latch. Then, unable to contain his excitement, he would roust the family at 3:30 am for the four hour journey to the mountains, with our nighttime goings marked by overload-induced sparks periodically emanating from the dragging rear bumper. The folks slept under a tarp roped to the car, while I slept on the ample shelf behind the Pontiac's rear seats. Later, when times were more flush, my father invested in a tattered, olive green war surplus army tent which must have weighed a hundred pounds. This pretty well finished off the Pontiac's rear suspension. Those were great times, but these days I am quite content to confine my overnight stays to mo-tels. - EO

SP San JosexxxxxSP Index

EO, 4-30-24

Staff prides itself in getting its facts straight (when it matters), so it was quite disconcerting to us when Wx4 friend Jeff Asay - an authority on all things Western Pacific - good naturedly ribbed us last Fall about our coverage of two interlocking towers that formerly guarded WP's traverse of SP main lines in San Jose, to whit: "I was shocked, I tell you, shocked, to see some commentary about the Western Pacific Valbrick and West San Jose Towers that was, to put it mildly, completely without factual basis. How, I asked myself, could Staff allow this to happen?"

Staff admits that we are are somewhat stumped ourselves, although we wish to point out that we DID spell the towers' names correctly. Perhaps we should not have composed the piece while still suffering of the dire gastrointestinal effects of tainted talapia served up at Wx4's 21st Anniversary Fish Fry and Sock Hop. At any rate, our transgressions were bad. Very Bad.

By way of a curative, we have foresworn talapia and have otherwise purloined intelligence from Jeff's authoritative WP books, The Iron Feather and Track and Time, for our own narrow purposes, as seen below..

Should anyone find fault in our revised presentation, blame Jeff.

Incidentally, though out of print, we note that brand new copies of The Iron Feather are still available at Arizona Hobbies at a very attractive price. New and used copies of Track and Time are available elsewhere, but as a WP cult classic, it is rather pricey.

Revised 4-30-24:

"The San Jose Line Change"

The photo and map at below right appear in in J.R. Signor's Fall, 2023 Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society Trainline article, "The San Jose Line Change".
It is a great read that serves as a nice overview and teaser for a book-length treatment currently being composed by well known San Jose historian Ken Middlebrook.
Below are bonus items contributed by Wx4 Staff, Shasta Division Archives and Jeff Asay.

San Jose's "Other" Interlocking Towers

Basset St., a.k.a. Market St., a.a.k.a. San Pedro St.
(take your pick) Station

Santa Clara Valley had six interlocking towers over the years. First, there were the well known and documented ones at College Park and Santa Clara, with the latter being preceeded by one located at the SPC crossing timetable east of the SP depot depot. At the time of the Forth Street line change on January 31, 1935, there were three additional towers: San Jose Tower immediately east of the Basset St. station; Western Pacific's West San Jose Tower which protected its crossing of SP's Santa Cruz main line; and Valbrick. which stood about a mile south of downtown.

Of the these three towers, only San Jose Tower (see photo at right) was still in service when Bassett Street closed. SP's Coast Division employee timetable #143 of 2-16-36 still listed it as active, but it was gone from #145 of 4-17-38. Lacking acces to #144, we presume it remained only as long as it was needed to facilitate scrapping of the Fourth Street line.

Both WP towers were already out of service when SP's new main track opened on 12-31-35. According to Jeff Asay's book, The Iron Feather, Valbrick Tower opened in 1922 and was torn down in 1937. It was replaced by a trainman actuated interlocking device in 1933, which itself was taken out of service before the issuance of aforementioned SP timetable #143, most likely on changeover day, January 31. Valbrick continued to serve as an interchange between the two railroads (see SP 1972 SPINS book). Sister West San Jose Tower, a like mechanical interlocking opened and closed at the same times as Valbrick, was also replaced with a trainman operated manual affair which survived until 1961 or 1962, when it was replaced by stop boards.

note: Many period SP and WP timetables are contained in Wx4's Historic Maps & Timetables pages.

click on the images to enlarge

above: Jeff Asay kindly forwarded these WP company images of its two towers as seen in The Iron Feather. At left is Valbrick Tower, looking eastward into wide open spaces along WP's line. In less than two decades from this circa 1925 photo, the area would become a jumble of warehouses and canneries. At right, the view looks westward up WP's single track in the direction of its (unseen) non-interlocked Peninsular Railway interurban crossing and finally, its West San Jose terminous fronting on The Alameda..

West San Jose Tower in situ

Given that they only existed for about 15 years and prior to the proliferation of railfan photographers, it is understandable that photos of WP's two San Jose towers are rare. Photos of both appear in The Iron Rooster, and here is another one that we were thrilled to discover at the Shasta Division Archives,...**

click on the image to enlarge

The photo looks up the Santa Cruz main line (now Vasona Branch) towards downtown from the corner of Race Street and Morepark Avenue (behind photographer), between the United States Products Corporation cannery on the left and the Contadina Canning Company's tomato cannery. In the distance the tower sits to the lower left of San Jose's first high rise, the 1925-built Bank of Italy (later, America) building that stood as a beacon for travelers until taller buildings began to obscure it in the later part of the 20th Century. The photo dates to 1931 and probably was recorded by an SP company photographer following a grade crossing accident. This image was cropped from a wider view.

...** but not for the reason you think. At first we did not even notice the tower sitting in the distance. Instead, it was the foreground that excited us. The location is on the Santa Cruz main line (now Vasona Branch) at the corner of Race Street and Morepark Avenue (behind photographer), between the United States Products Corporation cannery on the left (where Staff spent several college summers working on the fruit processing lines; also aluded to in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) and Contadina Canning Company's tomato cannery. You local readers of advancing years may recognize the spur where the WP boxcar sits as where Corn Products Corporation corn syrup laden tank cars promenently sat until the operation closed in the early 1980's.

The all-important San Jose Wye

It used to be that nothing larger than a mikadoo or a pacific could turn end-for-end within the Santa Clara Valley, as San Jose Roundhouse's 80 foot (or less, earlier on) turntable was the only thing available. Prior to the time of the West Side relocation, this was not such pressing inconvenience that SP felt compelled to remedy the situation, for The Valley was "hog" country where diminuative engines thrived. Likewise, freight trains off of the Milpitas Line (along with those from/to the Mulford Lines) all yarded at Newhall to exchange between Western and Coast Division crews, meaning that no wye was needed at San Jose Tower to connect them to the Coast Division. The same held true once the new line went into service. The east leg did not host Milpitas freights for its first several decades, until an interdivisional pool union agreement created Oakland-Watsonville Pool 4.

The prospect of the new West Side relocation changed the equation, not for freight trains, but rather for Milpitas Line passenger trains, which needed a direct connection out of the new depot. Thus, the east leg of San Jose wye was born. The Milpitas main track through the middle of College Park Yard functioned as the west leg (as it does today, minus yard). Milpitas passenger service disappeared in 1940, but certainly by then the new wye had found its highest and best use as a turning facility for locos and cuts of cars of unlimited length. Beyond facilitating larger engines, the wye alleviated the turntable bottleneck during Commute hours with its ability to handle coupled groups of engines. At some point (perhaps at the start?), SP installed a second west leg directly between the roundhouse and the east leg, which obviated tying up the main track at College Park.

Ultimately, in terms of operating movements, the new depot was placed on the wrong side of the tracks, something that became troublesome enough for SP to ponder a massive rearrangement of tracks in the mid 1960's

|C.M. Kurtz, SP Lines photo - Shasta Division Archives

The Basset St. - a.k.a. Market St., a.a.k.a. San Pedro St. (take your pick) station** - was literally in its last days when C.M. Kutz snapped this photo on december 12, 1935, but what really intrigues Wx4 is what was framed by the shed opening: an rare image of San Jose Tower. The (1700 pixel) full photo is here, while a (1700 pixel) larger version of the above cropped image is here.

Sharp eyes will note the express reefers spotted beyond the shed, as well as the high semaphore interlocking signal (above the train rear) guarding the exist from the diminuative yard. Staff was surprised to see one of SP's most modern P-10 heavy Pacifics on the head end of train #137. Heavy power on the Commutes at the time generally came in the form of ex EP&SW P-11 and P-12 Pacifics. Half a dozen years before, the train likely would have been handled by an E-27 4-4-0.

** ("station" , NOT depot in strict SP parlance: see the right hand column box above the Zukas photos towards the top of the page)

The thumbnail map below links to an enlarged, full version of the one appearing in the article, whose purpose seems to be to designate yard limits and union agreement points concerning pay for operating employees. Note that yard limits extended all the way to Los Gatos and New Almaden. This was a recent development on the latter after the long-time weekly mixed train was discontinued in favor of "as-needed" service by yard crews. Also note the short squiggle of Penninsular Ry. tracks leading to Luna Park at top left. The team tracks (just west of the old San Jose Flea Market on Berryessa Road) were served by SP until the 1980's.

(click image for PDF) Shasta Division Archives

Sour grapes, not wine grapes: San Jose parade float, early 1930's
Courtesy Ken Middlebrook, History San Jose

(Click on images for larger renditions - Shasta Division Archives)

Above are the 1925 permutations of SP's plans that ultimately were superseded by yet another version by the time that construction began at the end of the decade. In particular, the depot layout (upper right) is much more grandiose than what was actually constructed. The map at left shows three routes that were proposed over the years, but there were others. The final alignment opened in 1935 very generally followed Route #1 south from the new depot for a short distance around Willow Glen, but then struck directly for Route #3 and Lick.

above: A suburban coach served as a temporary West San Jose Depot while the grounds were torn up.
(Click on the image for a larger version - C.M. Kurtz, SP Lines photo, Shasta Division Archives)

SP contemplated moving its Coast Division main line away from downtown San Jose's Fourth Street from time to time over the course of more than four decades before construction began , even though executives had settled upon a general plan early on: A new depot located at the South Pacific Coast yard would replace the Bassett Street depot, and from there the relocated main line would thread through the vicinity of Willow Glen to a junction with the Fourth Street line...somewhere. The goals: no more fielding of irate letters by people marooned on the wrong side of Fourth Street during rush hour, along with higher speed track not inhibited by sharing the street face to face with pedestrians and vehicular traffic.

This SP photo shows condemned chair car #1939 serving as the temporary West San Jose ticket office and waiting room in the late afternoon of December 26, 1935. Five days later, West San Jose station and the main San Jose station at Bassett Street ceased to exist when the new San Jose station in the background opened for business. Many finishing touches remained to be done at photo time. Note the ladder resting on the side of the station building. Out of sight at photo left, a gas powered road roller was busy compacting the new Calpack macadam platform. A fair amount of ballasting remained unfinished, as well.

For further coverage of SP's activities in San Jose, see also Wx4's SP in San Jose & Santa Clara Valley pages.

Seen here is Santa Clara Valley's other big SP event of the era, the 1927 opening of the "new [San Jose] yard", which took over as the arrival-departure yard from overloaded College Park Yard, which itself had been dubbed the "new yard" after roughly two decades of augmenting the tiny "old yard" adjacent to Bassett Street Depot. Among others in the photo is Yardmaster Earl B. Isham, who hired out in 1902 as one of several generations of Ishams that worked San Jose's yards. Charley C. "Pop" Mathews was promoted to engineer in 1920, and much later had San Francisco's Mission Bay [roundhouse] Gardens renamed in his honor when he retired in 1949. Lyle H. Cleveland hired out as a fireman in 1925, but had to wait out the Depression to gain promotion to engineer in 1941. Wx4 has a PDF of his collected 1940-1962 time books, and Wx4 hosted Ernie Kiesel Collection of Southern Pacific Photographs has additional photos of all three gentlemen.

The flip side of the new San Jose Station

SP Lines drawing, Shasta Division Archives

Southern Pacific invested a considerable amount of brain power, not to mention expense, on arranging the station area "just so". As we see in this 1928 drawing, the company was originally inclined towards a layout that was a mirror image of the final design, plus a separate express house that did not make the final cut. Thus, when all was done, it was a minor architectural masterpiece...and an operational headache, for it was built on the wrong side of the tracks.

Critical info for the informed SP fan! HELD OVER! Further (artificial) Intelligence Upon a Pressing (to some) Matter
Dateline 4-30-24: Last summer, we revealed SP's official pronouncement upon was seems to be one of the more pressing matters in SP fan circles: Is "station" or "depot" the proper term for the structure where passengers await trains? Staff has learned that since this appeared on Wx4, the subject came up as a topic in an online discussion group that inexplicaby(!) failed to consult Wx4's good offices in the process of arriving at a correct resolution. Since, as a matter of course, we don tinfoil helmets to shield ourselves from the brain-mushing F-rays that invariably emanate from social media sites, we have not addressed the discussion group's lamentably errant conclusions directly, but instead pray that the conversation did not degenerate into personal observations in regard to the moral turpitude of participants' sisters and mothers.
Station or Depot? You make the call Our own attentions are turned towards the more pressing matter of impending happy hour.
	Wx4 staff fully admits that we have, since infancy, used the terms 'station' and 'depot' interchangeably when referencing passenger shelters. This, even after retiring from careers in railroading. In our experience, our fellow employees overwhelmingly did likewise. In its earlier years, SP bigwigs likewise did not seem to care much about this, to the extent that no definitions section even appeared in its book of rules until 1907. That year employees finally learned just what a station was: A place designated on the timetable by name...and blah blah blah. "Depot", on the other hand, remained forever shunned in the rule book.
Apparently at least one person DID care, as evidenced by the above insertion into a 1916 "Southern Pacific Bulletin". We suspect that it was merely one of those typical cases of a high-on official getting his shorts in a bunch over, again, something that nobody else cared about (late edit: save railfan discussion groups) - think Donald J. Russell and his fixation with hats. Regarding the article, whomever was behind this thinly disguised tiraid certainly was in a huff., eh? "Antiquated", and YIKES, "French" - pretty strong stuff for a house organ whose seeming mission was to make SP appear as controversial as melba toast. So, Southern Pacific clearly took a stand on the issue, but as far as Staff is concerned, we prefer to sit… with Manhattan, rather than hat, in hand. - EO, 7-2-23
Since the above was penned, it has occured to us that this is the 21st Century, and perhaps we should avail ourselves of the wonders of modern technology to arrive at an answer more in keeping with current prejudices: Thus, we have turned to artificial intelligence to divine an answer from the collective wisdom of the Internet: Mindful that ChatGPT on several occasions has given Staff follow-up answers that began with, "Sorry, I erred in the previous answer," we nevertheless conclude based up the above that AI and Staff are of one accord on the matter: If asked to take a stand, we prefer to sit. - EO, 4-30-24

Durango was still a relatively small, hardscrabble town in June 1967, when an unknown photogarpher took this stunning shot just a few days before Wx4 Staff's first visit. We have repeatedly commented (here and here) about Durango of old's transformation into todays crowded town, but we have no great compaint about this, given that much of it is due to the success of Durango & Silverton. Silverton still has its 1967 feel, on the other hand, although we wonder how many businesses extant in 1967 survived for another five years, let alone nearly 60. - Kodachrome slide, Wx4 Collection

"The Dumbarton"

Southern Pacific began construction of the Dumbarton Bridge in 1907, and completed it on September 12, 1910. Priorto its opening much to-do was made of San Francisco - San Joaquin Valley passenger service via The Altamont prior to its opening, it almost never happened, and then not much and not for long. In late December, 1911, having judged that the bridge pilings had settled sufficiently to host passenger service, the company instituted single round trip passenger and mixed trains between Niles and Redwood Junction. The passenger trains were gone before the next summer, but the mixed trains lasted for a few years.

The first three photos showing construction in the vicinity of the swing span near Dumbarton Point come courtesy of Shasta Division Archives, while the trailing two depicting the east and west approaches to the drawbridge were recorded by Cheney Photo Advertising Company (Wx4 Collection) apparently not long after the bridge's completion.

Santa Fe around the Bay

San Francisco ferry slip and yard, viewed from construction of Pier 46; photograper unknown; closeup of yard

Point Richmond ferry slips ca.1912; Cheney Photo Advertising Company

Tail car of the Angel, 1912 - HC Tibbits

Richmond Yard, 1915; closeup - HC Tibbitts

San Pablo Avenue, Richmond, 1915; closeup ; - HC Tibbitts

Berkeley, ca.1914 - Cheney Photo Advertising Co.

A Wx4 Staff Pick:

It is easy to miss smaller publications about SP, so we wish to point out an exceptionally well done booklet by stalwart Wx4 friend Steve Donaldson. His Southern Pacific Comes to Coos Bay covers Willamette Pacific's construction of the Coos Bay Branch, through its later years as an independent railroad. It is an absolute must have for any SP in Oregon fan.

28 pages, illustrated with photos from the late Tom Dill's Collection; $10 plus postage:

Oregon Coast Historical Railway
766 First Street
Coos Bay, OR 97420
http://orcorail.org/

As a measure of Grab Bag's obscurity, over the course of two decades, nobody has noticed that Staff spelled "eclectic" with three C's.

Even though Staff redecorated this interior page last year with simulated 1950's-style atomic pink and turquoise Naugahyde, The Wx4 Grab Bag has nevertheless remained a relatively obscure resident of Wx4's back pages. We aim to remedy this since Grab Bag is the heart and soul of Wx4, and as such, we humbly submit that it represents some our best work.

As a lesser function, Grab Bag serves as a repository for all of the weird graphics that have polluted Wx4's pages over the years, but fundamentally it hosts Real Railroad Stories, Wx4 Commentary and Miscellaneous Claptrap sections, which comprise our, shall we say "different", take on the railroad universe.

Within its listings, you shall find unique professional insights into railroading, such as the examples below. We estimate that if these don't send you running off into the safe arms of Trains.com, nothing will. - Staff

an epiphany in Leadership Training Class

how personal revelation eased the drama and heartburn of the Costco Food Court

Note to readers: this is a mercifully trimmed down version of the story that first appeared on Wx4 about 2007, when I was still one of the Amtrak minions.

I've always figured that in primitive societal conditions, such as those found in your typical railroad training class, it is best to keep things down-to-earth and save the lofty ideas and 'creative' teaching methods for a more receptive crowd, say perhaps the boys tending the local sanitary landfill.

My employer, Amtrak, thinks otherwise.

The company requires us to attend what we underlings colloquially refer to as 'finishing school', mid-career training scientifically designed to make passenger conductors and engineers (and rarely: managers) more acceptable in polite society, a daunting task. A key component of this is Leadership Training.

So there I was, pondering why a guy who had spent the last 15 years happily running an engine solamente, sans the annoying distraction of a fireman, wondering exactly why I would need a course in directing others. Quite suddenly, my peaceful ruminations were rudely interrupted by a hand thrusting a paper at me. The instructions on the page read something like:

Think of an incident in your daily personal life where
you employed leadership to resolve a situation.

Some of my classmates (the future assistant trainmaster wannabies) leapt into the exercise with relish, eager to display their innate qualities of leadership in times of crisis...but quite frankly, I was stumped. Then suddenly, an epiphany struck me just before I was supposed to read my answer to the class.

The exercise read roughly thus:

Describe the situation:
A: The family and I were at the Costco Food Court, and we couldn't decide between the chicken wrap and the Polish dog.

How did you employ leadership?
A: I finally told them: "We're getting the Polish dogs, dammit! They're cheaper!"

How did your leadership resolve the situation?
A. We should'a had the chicken.

Yep, as epiphanies go, it wasn't much, but when ran into my instructor a month or so later, he disclosed that my answer had caused a splash in the company training circuit. I suspect that this may be the only true legacy that I left to railroading. - E.O.

Role-playing: another fundamental part of Amtrak leadership training.

from the pages of TrainOrders.com: (with sincere apologies to Todd)
Until the last few years, when I began to experience an allergic reaction to social media, I maintained a presence on Trainorders.com, which was once a was a great place for old geezers like me to share interesting historical tidbits in its History & Nostalgia section. Sadly, my favored correspondents had a nasty habit of croaking, causing my usual Nostagia & History haunt to progressively evolve into Nostalgia ~~& History~~. How guys can wax nostalgic about the number of louvers on a GP9 or a photo of a searchlight signal, I don't know, but some do, God bless them. Thus growing evermore bored with typical postings, about all that I had to fall back upon was my sense of humor, which fell upon deaf ears, judging by a near total lack of response. Admittedly, my jokes typically did run contrary to nostalgia. Before the virtual torches and pitchforks drove me off, I did manage to get in a few licks. Here's one of them.
	Joe Railfan (not his real name): Question: Is sanding usually automatic? Bob, the expert (but not his real name) > Answer: These days it is almost completely automatic. > You get it when you aren't supposed to use it when > going over switches and can't get it when you need it. > > The sanding button on the control stand is a fly > by wire control. It tells the computer the > engineer wants to use sand and the computer > decides if the request is worthy. If you see > frosty or wet rail coming up but you are not yet > slipping you are not worthy until you slip.
My own professional take (edited for comprehension): As a doddering old retiree, I am not versed on computer controlled anything, save my 15 year old MAC , but older analog automatic sanders typically had an "automatic drain-the-sandbox feature" whereby they they on automatically, and remained on. Sometimes you could get them to "automatically" quit sanding by big-holing the engine and then recovering the air, but this was not very conducive to train integrity while moving, if you catch my drift. Another common automatic feature was the "auto-clog sand conservation device", which dribbled moisture into sanding hoses, as the result of a carefully considered lack-of-maintenance program intended to counteract the "automatic drain-the sandbox-feature". This turned sand into a cement-like substance which could be mined for building material. Auto-clog was particularly effective during freezing weather. If you absolutely required sand, you would grab a mallet from the cab (if it was not already stolen) and attempt to dislodge the sand by beating the snot out the offending hose(s). For safety's sake, one performed this operation while the train was stopped. An added benefit of this process was that it could be very therapeutic if one imagined the company logo on the sand hose. Fusees generally were handy in freezing weather, but less so for thawing frozen hoses, since overly enthusiastic application of 1000 degree heat could melt hoses, or even them catch on fire. This usually was a self-defeating exercise until you got the hang of it. The auto clog feature was not accessorized with a console indicator, but it nevertheless could initially be detected by the whining sound created by the front truck's sudden ~30 million rpm wheel slip, and further confirmed by the screech of the overspeed warning whistle. A simple glance of the speedometer, which microseconds before had read 40 mph, but now reads 98 mph, served to confirm the confirmation of the confirmation that the auto-clog feature's operation was causing this massive wheel slip, but only if it was taking place on the #2 axle, the only one connected to the speedo. For all you know by then, wheel slip on the rear truck may have already spun themselves down to the nubs. I must say that it was very helpful to have so many indications at your disposal confiding that your sanders and wheel-slip control were inoperative, but the ultimate indication of this - on freight trains at least - was not at all subtle: a sudden lurch ahead, followed by the explosion of emergency vent valves back in the cars as they parted ways. An experienced head brakemen was generally attuned to what this meant, should it occur in the unlikely event that he was awake. Of course, I worked passenger trains in sunny California for the last half of my career. Freight guys who worked their entire careers in winter-prone places like Minneapolis or Cut Bank no doubt have a much fuller working understanding of automatic sanding features. Some of these lucky guys are still working on first and second generation rolling museums, thus are able to speak on the subject in a most colorful present tense. I hope that this helps. - EO

(click on image for larger version) NEW 4-30-24
	The center attraction of the above 1996 image, shot by an unknown photographer somewhere on the Adironak Railway, is a 1959 Edsel Station Wagon, with an Alco something-or-another in back. The loco's ID doesn't matter because Staff wants to talk about evolution of the Edsel. Back in '59, folks thought that its jet-engine-intake of a grill was pretty stupid looking. Today, the Edsel's mouth has mutated into several overblown intakes, AND the darn cars sell! We regard this as another sign of civilization's decline. Quick quiz: Which of the below photos depicts a basking shark?

Caltrain currently is planning a September changeover from diesl to electric, meaning that its venerable F40's will finally be put out to pasture after nearly four decades of service. Considering the beating that they have taken, their longevity is nothing shor of remarkable, No. 901 was/is my favorite unit, for it was the first Caltrain engine that I ran as an engineer after qualifying on the territory. Over the course of the next 16 years, the loco never let me down, whereas the Boise monsters that Caltrain will continue to use in Gilroy service were crap - and looks are no deceiving. So, given their antiquity and faithful years of service to the public, I propose that Caltrain retain one F40 for special events. Why not good old #901? - EO

(above) Caltrain #901 in CDTX paint displays a Capitol Train's markers southbound at Niles on 9-23-95 - photographer unknown - Wx4 Collection (below) Caltrain #901's nose with an odd experimental logo at San Jose on 8-13-98. Alan Miller photo, Wx4 collection

Professional RR Terms Disambiguated by a "Seasoned Pro", Part 1:

NEW 4-30-2024: "Baggage Smasher"xxxxxxxxxxxx
a rather long-winded explanation

Antiquated vernacular term for railway baggageman or porter - Southern Pacific replaced many of its baggage smashers in the 1930's with automated baggage crushers, such as we see in this 1930's company photo slipped to us by one J. R. Signor. As it turned out, the fledgling technology proved to be less effective in shredding luggage than its human counterparts. Instead it tended to apply its best destructive efforts inward towards itself, thus subjecting its owner to the same sort of thing that passengers had endured for a hundred years. Accordingly, this precipitated their premature withdrawl. See "Wx4 Looks at the Particulars of Baggage Smashing" for further (perhaps more trustworthy) illumination regarding the term and trade.

A Living RS-32!

Genesee Valley Alco RS-32 still plies Falls Road Railroad today, just as it did back when Ben Martin recorded this image of ex-NYC (& etc.) of it plowing Main Street in Albion, NY in February, 2015. Former SP units likewise exist, but not in revenue service. Wx4 has a very large collection of RS-32 photos of all stripes, and who knows, someday we may find time to post them.