The Irvine Ranch leg of Santa Fe's Venta Spur had two Orange packing houses. The Irvine Valencia Grower at Kathryn Station was a large packing house that packed and shipped significant acres of oranges. They had their own ice plant and could ice and load seven or more reefers. The Frances Citrus Assn. at Frances Station was an older packing house with few member and shipped 1-3 cars a day. Frances received pre-iced reefers.
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The Santa Fe served the line with either a Fruit Turn out of San Bernardino or what I saw more often was the Santa Ana Switcher. Most day the train would come out at night, perhaps 9-10 PM. Trains backed out onto the spur since side tracks were usually plugged with empty dry reefers and switches were arranged for switching that way. At Kathryn they pulled the loads and replace them with dry empties. The packing house loaded the cars with a conveyor at one location and then rolled loaded cars out of the way for another car to be loaded. The spur was on a grade that aided the rolling of cars and derails were in place at several points on the spur to catch any cars that got away. The dry reefers where brought in a groups of cars that were spotted on side tracks at various locations on the spur and along the main line.
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Frances got pre-iced cars that I think came from the ice plant at San Bernardino. They would come on Fruit Turns that worked the spur or set them out for the Santa Ana switch to take out to Frances. France loaded their cars with hand trucks and the cars were spotted on a side track at two door of the packing house and if more cars were loaded there, they were spotted on the spurs main track and cars were loaded through a car on the next track. Cars were usually at the packing house one day, but some times they would not finish loading a car and hold it over to the next day. A piece of card board with "BABY LOAD" written on it was places on the end of the car to tell the train crew to not take the car. On the weekend, the packing houses often worked half day and the Santa Ana Switch would come out in the afternoon to pick up the loads. There were usually two Santa Ana Switches, each bulletined to work 12 hours (such as 6AM-6PM and 6PM-6AM) one on Saturdays and none on Sundays. It sometime was needed to be done on Sundays, a Fullerton Switch could be used. (This was the common practice in the late 50s and in the 60s).
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If the Santa Ana Switch worked the spur, the loads would be set out for one of the SBX freights (San Diego to San Bernardino) to San Berdoo. The Santa Ana Switch used Alco S-4 locomotives during most time and they were quite loud as they shoved trains up the grade on the spur.
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The Santa Fe didn't want to leave the pre-iced cars at Frances for long periods of time. I looked forward to Monday morning back in the early 60s when we lived near Frances and I could get to see a daylight train on the spur. The Santa Ana Switch would bring icers out to Frances on Monday mornings. I would wait across the street from the packing house and watch them bring in orange from the groves and workers looking down the track to see if their cars were coming. Finally a dark spot showed up and slowly grew. Eventually the shape of a brown caboose came into focus. The train stopped to line the derail before shoving the caboose past the switch to the packing house siding and the reefers were spotted. In a short time the Alco S-4 had couple on to the caboose and was heading down the grade.
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Cliff Prather
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