After getting everything open it was all great material! Sometime it would be interesting to see when that building was taken down, before or after 1952 which is a good year to have the ferry as well as a variety of SN models and vehicles. I sent pictures to family with all those trucks. Thanks so much.?
On Monday, April 24, 2023, 5:03 AM, Garth Groff and Sally Sanford <mallardlodge1000@...> wrote:
Jim,
I have some views of motors at the 2nd & M service facility from Will Whittaker and Ken Jenkins, but no shots of the facility itself. I agree it has not been well documented, or at least the documentation has not been generally available. Add to this, the Sanborn maps do not show the tracks of electric railroads after about 1910, even if they were significant freight carriers. The buildings might be on some maps, but the?facility is something I have never researched. [Note to self (and to this group), see what is available among the Library of Congress online Sanborn maps.]
The best information on SN-served industries is found in Western Pacific Circular 167E, but that covers only 1957 or so. Information on the 40th & Shafter yard is missing, so means the document was isssued/updated?after February 28, 1957 when the SN's?Oakland line was abandoned. The only original known to me is in the CSRM library. I paid them to make me a copy (which I had locally bound), but there have been what I assume are pirated copies for sale by online vendors in the past couple of years. I have never seen earlier versions of this document.?Curiously, the CSRM example's cover sheet is scribbled "SN Yardmaster's".?
I don't think the WP or the SN ever issued "shippers' guides", as many other railroads did. If they did, I would love to see a copy. 167E was strictly an internal document.
According to the Circular, River Lines was served by a two-car spur which was jointly operated by the "WP-SN-SP". Technically this was an interchange, since the River Lines was a common carrier. Their passenger steamer service between Sacramento and San Francisco ended when US Highway 40 was completed in 1940, and the Delta King and Delta Queen were requisitioned by the Navy. I could not find any information online about River?Line's freight traffic, but by 1957, such traffic was probably in "terminal" decline due to truck competition. Perhaps in earlier years there was a longer spur or spurs. But I speculate, and that is usually a bad thing.
Curious factoid. Hal Wilumnder, steam aficionado and founder of the short-lived Camino, Cable & Northern excursion line, promoted building a river steamboat for freight traffic in the 1970s. He thought (probably optimistically) that there was still a need for such service on the upper Sacramento River. AFAIK, nothing came of this project, beyond an article in one of the Sacramento newspapers. ?
Yours Aye,
Garth Groff ??
On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 6:27?PM James Dolan <
dolan@...> wrote:
Hi Garth,
Thanks for posting these interesting photos as well as the link to a number of other cool shots of the waterfront (e.g., the attached showing the full length of the River Lines facility [I brightened it up a bit in Photoshop]). From the lack of overhead, it appears that almost all of the visible warehouses south of the bridge were served only by SP. I've long been interested in what customers SN served in Sacramento, but information is surprisingly difficult to come by, as have been details of the SN engine facility at 2nd & M Streets.
Neat stuff. Thanks again.
Cheers,
James
