SOUTHERN PACIFIC NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- A chapter from our full movie "Donner Pass Thunder" www.cspmovies.com
This is a time when SP was busy, and action was packed with one last stand their form of iconic railroading. This final look at Sacramento and Roseville was years before Union Pacific changed everything forever! The video is loaded with GP-9 and SD-7 and 9 action plus great coverage of old Sacramento, Roseville and the Roseville hump yard before its demise. Older, foreign and leased power on full display, with visions you can no longer see today. The Yard in Roseville, is the shell of what it once was these days and the structures and hump yard are highlighted in this special video.
www.cspmovies.com from the full movie "Donner Pass Thunder"
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A super look at SP in Northern California in the 1990's from our full movie "Donner Pass Thunder". Find it at www.cspmovies.com
This brings back good memories of visiting old town Sacramento with my nefew in the late 1990,so. He's 46 now, and I'm 57. With the museum, it's a bit of railway fan heaven.
This video is simply amazing and a railroad treasure. 👏🏾
Thank you we appreciate the compliments lifelivedloved! We agree with you 100%, the SP was a special railroad for sure! This time was a neat period with older and newer locomotives working together and with clean freight cars for the most part.
The switchman cutting off cars (Pulling Pins) at the Hump (8 min mark) is Don Young whose father, uncle and two cousins were switchmen. Yard crews generally had 3 switchmen, a foreman, a fieldman and a pin puller. As example at the east end of the bowl yard, the pin puller guided the engine around, coupling it on to a bowl track while the fieldman would walk the track making all the couplings. Then the pin puller would move the engine to different track to be coupled and so on until ready to pull those coupled tracks out of the bowl and doubling them all together to make up an outbound train that they hauled up into the departure yard. The foreman supervised but also assisted where needed, especially in the time before radios when hand signals were used and an extra switchman would be needed to pass hand signals where the track was curved. When doubling the train together for the departure yard, the pin puller would climb on top of the car next to the engine so he could see the foreman standing in a signal passing tower at the bowl while the fieldman on the ground passed signals to the foreman in the tower who relayed to the pin puller on the head end. The fieldman would align the switches and make the actual coupling between the two or more tracks involved
Thanks for the explanation, I never knew all those details! It is more complicated than people realize especially at night or in bad weather. The Roseville Hump was an amazing piece of railroad history. It seemed like every railroad car in the US went over it sometime in their lives if they were in interchange service. I once read that SP billed cars to over 450 railroads in the US, Mexico and Canada both big and small in the 1940's and 50's! It is cool that you knew it was Don Young. If he is still around ask him if he ever knew Don Rosen the Elvas Operator and Roseville Trainmaster who was there when we filmed this rare footage.
Don Rosen worked as a yardmaster for a while so yes. Don and I go way back. I hired out as a switchman in Roseville in 1966. In the 1970s, Don was the Agent in Woodland when I worked local freight on the West Valley.
So if you have questions, I might help. I also worked out of Klamath Falls on the Modoc when it was operated by train orders.
Growing up in the SF Bay Area in the 1950s, then moving to the Sierra Foothills in 1979 along the original Transcontinental route, I have fond memories or the era and the changes in operations and rolling stock seen.
Nice footage and explanations Charles. Thank you for these videos.
Growing up in The Bay Area, I remember those days.
What a magical time to grow up! So many special railroading memories!
Nice seeing that Soo Line power.
Thanks collinrust2641, those Soo Line locomotives were on the SP many times in the 1980 and 1990's! I always seemed to miss them when they came thru. This was one of the highlights of my railfanning days in Sacramento!
Charles, do you guys have videos SP’s locomotive shops throughout their system? And, as a bonus question…the famous red emergency light…are there any videos of it in operation on a SP unit? Never seen it used….
Are there any videos you could upload of trains on the Peninsula Corridor in the 80s and 90s? I would also love to see shots of CalTrain immediately after the earthquake of 1989.
Yes, check out our "SP By the Bay" DVD 1960-1997 which does have lots of CalTrain or for older views "Historic SP Around the Greater Bay" 1940's and 1950's
www.cspmovies.com
I will definitely buy it. Do you happen to know what the grade crossing at Ralston Ave in Belmont looked like before the grade separation?