I was in Antelope just yesterday, telling my wife about watching the SD7Rs working back then. I never thought I'd see any of that again - thanks for recording and posting that.
Damn. Those roots blowers sound like a pipe organ. I grew up up in Palmer Mass on the Central Vermont,and all night long GP-9s moaning n groaning all night making cuts north of the diamond
In the mid 90s I used to ride my bike all over Springfield Oregon and watch the SP SD9s do switching for Weyerhaeuser and Rosboro lumber. And Weyerhaeuser had this dumb yellow WATCO CF7. I hated that thing lol...I wanted to see the SD9s
Sept. 2020, At 6:08 min, in the bottom right corner, there are a couple of stairs and a metal handrail. I live two blocks from here and it looks exactly the same ! This 'Film' was taken from a raised dirt parking lot (google maps) Behind Perry's Barber Shop on Vernon St. at Taylor St. and those stairs are still there ! These tracks are still being used to build trains. The "Hump" yard , a mile and a half south west of here is also still in operation. Great film and memories.
Alas. It’s the Siren’s sweet refrain to me… When working on the Sacramento Division, Roseville was my home terminal when I hired out braking in ‘72. I transferred into engine service the following year at Roseville. While firing I worked Amtrak whenever I could, a catch usually off the extra board. Ditto for the fireman’s helper pool when it was in action, usually restricted to the summer months and usually on a fruit block, the RVOGP, perishables shipping via PFE. They would run between 5 to 7 trains, fleeted, at one per hour starting at 05:00. These trains were hotter than hot. In the winter firemen would catch a rotary off the extra board. The road-master or Division Engineer would control the wings and the deflector. The engineer ran the consist and it was the fireman who controlled the speed of the blades. But mostly working as a hostler until “permanent“ hostlers were hired, somewhere around 1981 or so. I was promoted to engineer in 1976, still in Roseville. In 1983 I transferred to the Oregon Division, with Dunsmuir as my home terminal. Starting in 1984 I accepted the job of Road Foreman of Engines, headquartered in Dunsmuir until returning to my seniority in 1987. From there I ran out the rest of my miles. And, I finished running yellow engines with a different railroad name at the top of the paychecks, but I was NEVER UP. It’s hard to explain. The true SP was not a railroad, but rather a mind set. And we looked out for each other, on the job and off. With a small number of exceptions we truly were a band of brothers. You’ll never see that again. To fully understand, you just had to be there. My railroad blood runs deep. Open my veins and I would surely bleed Daylight livery. I am a third generation rail on both sides of my family, with over 325 years of collective seniority amongst us, as enginemen, trainmen, dispatchers, one of my brothers worked for PMT as well as company officers. With the exception of my grandfathers, one who was a Santa Fe hoghead out of Cleburne, Texas, the other a car knocker for the MKT, aka the “Katy Lady.” Both my brother and I started our careers working as clerks for the Sacramento Northern before getting on with the SP. All the rest has been with the SP; brothers, uncles and their fathers and even an aunt who worked as a caller in WWII. And we of the Sacramento Division were renegades. The harder Market Street worked to bankrupt the railroad, the harder we worked to keep it going. A lot of trainmen carried train order string, fusees and/or bailing wire in their grips or under the long cushion in the caboose, the handiest tools of the trade. And as far as the prime movers goes, did you know you can bypass any protection device and keep the motor running with just a flagstick or fusee positioned properly? As for the pig headed up the Valley under the ‘crooked bridge’ at the top of this video I couldn’t help but notice the professionally created flat spots on the caboose… I miss it. It gets into your blood. And anyone who says it doesn’t is lying. But there has been a disconcerting image I ran across, probably Flickr, an interior shot of the CSRM in old Sacramento. There I saw a tunnel motor sitting next to a Sacramento Northern switcher. That is because my brother and I tried to take that engine for a little train ride but couldn’t get it to move. I didn’t know what a generator field switch was back then. As for the tunnel engine, it’s a bit unsettling to see the state of the art power that you made your living with displayed in a museum…. Thanks for the video. It brings back many fond memories…
Hi guys. I’m astounded that a notification to an old post would still bear fruit. Yup. We had a lot of fun and in some instances, mom and dad were in many instances way cooler than what is considered cool today, but still hot. Mom gets a picture taken in 1967 wearing a skimpy sun suit sitting on the hood of dad’s 435hp off the showroom floor, removable hard top Corvette Stingray that you saw the only one time captured in that picture. There is very little fun in youth these days, primarily because we used it all up. And they sure as hell didn’t invent the “party.” About the railroad thing, here’s the deal for all the respondents. You guys can volunteer to perform as my guinea pigs. You see, for the last eight years (actually the last eight winters. Retired, living on the slopes of Mount Shasta one finds a lot of time on they’re hands) I have been writing a book on railroading in particular fashion. The work, titled “RailTails; True Stories From and of Southern Pacific’s Sacramento and Oregon Divisions.” I have a final draft that will undergo the last editing on my part this winter, before (hopefully) finding a publisher who may wish to edit the crap out of it. If for sale on a bookstand as it reads today, including photos, you’ll have to be over 18 to legally buy it. And it is something completely new. There are books on SP locomotives, both steam and diesel, various SP Divisions, SP corporate history and acquisitions, modeling the SP et. al. The book I’ve been working on is about the PEOPLE that populated the SP, and their stories are the case en point. It’s not a tell all piece of work, but it is graphic in some points both visually and verbally. It is simply a tale told about what it was, when it was, why it was and who it was that is immortallized, which I owe those gone before. Truly, “the voices on the wind.” Okay. Here’s a teaser… In January, 1952, SP Train 101, the westbound “City of San Francisco” got snowbound in the Sierra’s after plowing into a huge snow-slide. It was trapped for over three days, with other avalanches in the offing in the worst storm ever to hit the state of California in the granite citadel of the Sierra Nevada up to that point in history. There are stories, like “The Case of the Stranded Streamliner” and videos documenting the action. As you investigate, you’ll see the name ‘Bob Miller’ cropping up everywhere. He was the Assistant Sacramento Division Superintendent at the time. He was also my father. I’m R A Miller, Jr. Now. You have to ask yourself a question; “Do I feel lucky today?” If you do then send me an e-mail at samuraihoghead@hotmail.com. with a receiving address that I can ship it to (it’s an old program and I can’t send it via e-mail. Works Word. Eight years old, remember?) and I will send you some chapters of the work (by the way, that is a junk mail address, so good luck to anyone trying to hack into anything usable) that I already have printed. You guys are the demographic representation I need, and is also aimed at non-railroaders, minor historians or just people looking for a chuckle. What I’m planning on sending is some “G” rated material. I’m looking for an honest evaluation. Were it otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting my time here. Now, on a gamble I am including a forward to the book. It is prose and written in asymmetric stanzas so I don’t know if it will print right in this forum. It alludes to the overall work I’ve tried to create. forwarder The truth is at times this has been more than a little painful for me... I have shed more than one or two tears to be sure... Oh, there is a healthy dose of nostalgia at play but, the tears…? They’re more for the voices on the wind... And they are there, if you can listen. If you can make time to listen. The tears the same for the grand old dam, Lady Steam... The engines were usually referred to as a “she” and for good reason. They were endowed with all the attributes we normally apply lovingly to the more familiar female of our own species. The pounding of the cross-compound air pump is her heartbeat, that when aboard is felt as well as heard, as if your head lay upon her loving bosom. Never for long but when at rest, she is usually panting after long hours of arduous labor… A heavy drinker and forever thirsty, the water is her life’s only blood. But she was finicky there... Lady Steam... as it had to be prepared just so. The whistle is her voice, a soothing coo to most, long and low throughout the night time countryside, inviting, beckoning you to join... Some promise unspoken and the headlight her weary but ever vigilant, never closing eyes. She dines with gusto on wood, coal or oil for her sustenance; her heady perfume surrounds her, wafting through the morning dews and damps blended of hot oil and hot grease and steam and smoke her addictive scent… Her bell lets each one know that it is time to go; and all the while when out and running, she hikes her skirts and the wild action of the side rods, cranks and eccentrics are her legs in dizzy dance; the bark of the exhaust her laborious protest. She cries tears of condensation, welling up on her tender sides in the cool of a shotgun dawn… And, as with all ladies, she needed lots of attention and loving and tender care. I barely knew her, but she is my one, true love. Pictures of her is all we have left, and she photographed so well... Lady Steam… But none of us will ever feel her embrace or fall asleep to her lonesome, melodic moans. If for none other nor that alone, all should weep. Send not to know which signals to show nor never to learn for whom is departing as her bell tolls... Lady Steam… for one day it shall toll for thee and me, the same as it did for she... Lady Steam… As ours join the eternal chorus, of the voices on the wind...
At 6:30, that train is on the East bound for Chicago tracks and was filmed at the south end of Atlantic St. At 8:12, the photographer has moved to the Amtrak platform on the west side at the engine house on Church St, , still there and operational. At 8:10, we are now at the Sacramento Light Rail Station in the middle of I-80 at Watt Ave in North Sacramento. S.P. main is to the left a quarter mile, out of view. At 9:50, a different location, 1103 'B' Street in Sacramento. Looks the same .
SP SD7s were originally equipped with 2 fuel tanks, with the first one holding water for the steam generator as the SD7s were used as passenger units for the 50's. In the 60's the SD7s were demoted to yard duties so the water tank became redundant. Same story with a few SD9s, albeit they continued work on mainline and branchline trains into the 90s.
The containers on flat cars around the one-minute mark somehow seem more retro than the cabooses on the back of the trains!
And I never thought in a million years I'd miss the sound of a 645 prime mover.
me too
Mark French You never know you will miss something until it's gone
567's and 645's - smooth music to lull one to sleep by.
I was in Antelope just yesterday, telling my wife about watching the SD7Rs working back then. I never thought I'd see any of that again - thanks for recording and posting that.
You're welcome. Thanks for the comment.
This yard has always held a special place in my heart. Many of my family grew up watching these trains roll in and out of the yard. Great video!
The parking lot at this location was a good place to see Eastbound AND Northbound trains departing. Thanks for the comment.
Beautiful sight & sound!!!
Thanks for the positive comment.
The EMD 567 Non-Turbo SD7 or SD9's highnose or SW1500 all sounds i have missed since the fall of SP
I concur. Thanks for the comment.
this is the year my son was born,...lol,...the high hood, can't get enough lol,... thank U so much.
You're welcome. Thanks for the comment.
that was my favorite spot to have lunch,behind the post office
Oh, how I miss the Espee. Wonderful video.
Dang - that brings back memories of GP9's and strings of PFE mechanical reefers in the yard across from where I lived so long ago in another state
That's some incredibly sharp video for 1988. I got my first camcorder in 1988. S-VHS format. I wonder if this one is also S-VHS.
You got some real history recorded......
Sometimes I just listen to the sounds of those old supercharged 567s. I'm glad you enjoyed it and Thanks for the comment.
Damn. Those roots blowers sound like a pipe organ. I grew up up in Palmer Mass on the Central Vermont,and all night long GP-9s moaning n groaning all night making cuts north of the diamond
Fantastic footage! I enjoy the old SD7s switching the yard. And to see back before my time on how railroading was done 😎
An excellent video. ♡ T.E.N.
Thank You! It's one of my personal favorites.
0:01 & 2:29 sweet engine sound
Great cameo by Stockton Terminal & Eastern S2 #560 (ex-Western Pacific 560).
In the mid 90s I used to ride my bike all over Springfield Oregon and watch the SP SD9s do switching for Weyerhaeuser and Rosboro lumber. And Weyerhaeuser had this dumb yellow WATCO CF7. I hated that thing lol...I wanted to see the SD9s
1505 & 1531 are actually SD7's. At 8:27 in the same video there is an SD9 barely visible behind SD&E Alco S2 #560. Thanks for the comments.
Sept. 2020, At 6:08 min, in the bottom right corner, there are a couple of stairs and a metal handrail. I live two blocks from here and it looks exactly the same ! This 'Film' was taken from a raised dirt parking lot (google maps) Behind Perry's Barber Shop on Vernon St. at Taylor St. and those stairs are still there ! These tracks are still being used to build trains. The "Hump" yard , a mile and a half south west of here is also still in operation. Great film and memories.
That bridge is an East Valley line landmark.
I grew up in San Jose and remember SP Cadillacs running up and down the Peninsula, and a few on the NWP when I lived in Santa Rosa.
SP had a bunch of SD7's and SD9's.
Them high hoods brings back memories.
Roots-blowered supercharged 567 2-stroke diesels are definitely a disappearing memory. Thanks for the comment.
In the latter part of this video, there were some tunnel motors without the UDE light. Makes me wonder if some scenes are post 1990.
Excellent
Alas. It’s the Siren’s sweet refrain to me…
When working on the Sacramento Division, Roseville was my home terminal when I hired out braking in ‘72. I transferred into engine service the following year at Roseville. While firing I worked Amtrak whenever I could, a catch usually off the extra board. Ditto for the fireman’s helper pool when it was in action, usually restricted to the summer months and usually on a fruit block, the RVOGP, perishables shipping via PFE. They would run between 5 to 7 trains, fleeted, at one per hour starting at 05:00. These trains were hotter than hot. In the winter firemen would catch a rotary off the extra board. The road-master or Division Engineer would control the wings and the deflector. The engineer ran the consist and it was the fireman who controlled the speed of the blades. But mostly working as a hostler until “permanent“ hostlers were hired, somewhere around 1981 or so. I was promoted to engineer in 1976, still in Roseville.
In 1983 I transferred to the Oregon Division, with Dunsmuir as my home terminal. Starting in 1984 I accepted the job of Road Foreman of Engines, headquartered in Dunsmuir until returning to my seniority in 1987. From there I ran out the rest of my miles. And, I finished running yellow engines with a different railroad name at the top of the paychecks, but I was NEVER UP. It’s hard to explain. The true SP was not a railroad, but rather a mind set. And we looked out for each other, on the job and off. With a small number of exceptions we truly were a band of brothers. You’ll never see that again. To fully understand, you just had to be there.
My railroad blood runs deep. Open my veins and I would surely bleed Daylight livery. I am a third generation rail on both sides of my family, with over 325 years of collective seniority amongst us, as enginemen, trainmen, dispatchers, one of my brothers worked for PMT as well as company officers. With the exception of my grandfathers, one who was a Santa Fe hoghead out of Cleburne, Texas, the other a car knocker for the MKT, aka the “Katy Lady.” Both my brother and I started our careers working as clerks for the Sacramento Northern before getting on with the SP. All the rest has been with the SP; brothers, uncles and their fathers and even an aunt who worked as a caller in WWII.
And we of the Sacramento Division were renegades. The harder Market Street worked to bankrupt the railroad, the harder we worked to keep it going. A lot of trainmen carried train order string, fusees and/or bailing wire in their grips or under the long cushion in the caboose, the handiest tools of the trade. And as far as the prime movers goes, did you know you can bypass any protection device and keep the motor running with just a flagstick or fusee positioned properly?
As for the pig headed up the Valley under the ‘crooked bridge’ at the top of this video I couldn’t help but notice the professionally created flat spots on the caboose…
I miss it. It gets into your blood. And anyone who says it doesn’t is lying. But there has been a disconcerting image I ran across, probably Flickr, an interior shot of the CSRM in old Sacramento.
There I saw a tunnel motor sitting next to a Sacramento Northern switcher. That is because my brother and I tried to take that engine for a little train ride but couldn’t get it to move. I didn’t know what a generator field switch was back then. As for the tunnel engine, it’s a bit unsettling to see the state of the art power that you made your living with displayed in a museum….
Thanks for the video. It brings back many fond memories…
I'm glad I was able to make a small contribution to the ghosts and shadows of an empire. Thank you for the reminiscing.
Hi guys.
I’m astounded that a notification to an old post would still bear fruit. Yup. We had a lot of fun and in some instances, mom and dad were in many instances way cooler than what is considered cool today, but still hot. Mom gets a picture taken in 1967 wearing a skimpy sun suit sitting on the hood of dad’s 435hp off the showroom floor, removable hard top Corvette Stingray that you saw the only one time captured in that picture. There is very little fun in youth these days, primarily because we used it all up. And they sure as hell didn’t invent the “party.”
About the railroad thing, here’s the deal for all the respondents.
You guys can volunteer to perform as my guinea pigs. You see, for the last eight years (actually the last eight winters. Retired, living on the slopes of Mount Shasta one finds a lot of time on they’re hands) I have been writing a book on railroading in particular fashion.
The work, titled “RailTails; True Stories From and of Southern Pacific’s Sacramento and Oregon Divisions.” I have a final draft that will undergo the last editing on my part this winter, before (hopefully) finding a publisher who may wish to edit the crap out of it. If for sale on a bookstand as it reads today, including photos, you’ll have to be over 18 to legally buy it. And it is something completely new. There are books on SP locomotives, both steam and diesel, various SP Divisions, SP corporate history and acquisitions, modeling the SP et. al.
The book I’ve been working on is about the PEOPLE that populated the SP, and their stories are the case en point. It’s not a tell all piece of work, but it is graphic in some points both visually and verbally. It is simply a tale told about what it was, when it was, why it was and who it was that is immortallized, which I owe those gone before. Truly, “the voices on the wind.”
Okay. Here’s a teaser…
In January, 1952, SP Train 101, the westbound “City of San Francisco” got snowbound in the Sierra’s after plowing into a huge snow-slide. It was trapped for over three days, with other avalanches in the offing in the worst storm ever to hit the state of California in the granite citadel of the Sierra Nevada up to that point in history. There are stories, like “The Case of the Stranded Streamliner” and videos documenting the action. As you investigate, you’ll see the name ‘Bob Miller’ cropping up everywhere.
He was the Assistant Sacramento Division Superintendent at the time. He was also my father. I’m R A Miller, Jr.
Now. You have to ask yourself a question; “Do I feel lucky today?” If you do then send me an e-mail at samuraihoghead@hotmail.com. with a receiving address that I can ship it to (it’s an old program and I can’t send it via e-mail. Works Word. Eight years old, remember?) and I will send you some chapters of the work (by the way, that is a junk mail address, so good luck to anyone trying to hack into anything usable) that I already have printed.
You guys are the demographic representation I need, and is also aimed at non-railroaders, minor historians or just people looking for a chuckle. What I’m planning on sending is some “G” rated material. I’m looking for an honest evaluation. Were it otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting my time here.
Now, on a gamble I am including a forward to the book. It is prose and written in asymmetric stanzas so I don’t know if it will print right in this forum. It alludes to the overall work I’ve tried to create.
forwarder
The truth is at times this has been more than a little painful for me...
I have shed more than one or two tears to be sure...
Oh, there is a healthy dose of nostalgia at play but, the tears…? They’re
more for the voices on the wind... And they are there, if you can listen.
If you can make time to listen.
The tears the same for the grand old dam, Lady Steam...
The engines were usually referred to as a “she” and for good reason. They
were endowed with all the attributes we normally apply lovingly
to the more familiar female of our own species.
The pounding of the cross-compound air pump is her heartbeat, that when aboard is
felt as well as heard, as if your head lay upon her loving bosom. Never for long
but when at rest, she is usually panting after long hours of arduous labor…
A heavy drinker and forever thirsty, the water is her life’s only blood.
But she was finicky there... Lady Steam... as it had to be prepared just so.
The whistle is her voice, a soothing coo to most, long and low throughout the
night time countryside, inviting, beckoning you to join... Some promise unspoken
and the headlight her weary but ever vigilant, never closing eyes.
She dines with gusto on wood, coal or oil for her sustenance; her heady perfume
surrounds her, wafting through the morning dews and damps
blended of hot oil and hot grease and steam and smoke her addictive scent…
Her bell lets each one know that it is time to go; and all the while when out
and running, she hikes her skirts and the wild action of the side rods, cranks and eccentrics are her legs in dizzy dance; the bark of the exhaust her laborious protest. She cries tears of condensation, welling up on her tender sides
in the cool of a shotgun dawn…
And, as with all ladies, she needed lots of attention and loving and tender care.
I barely knew her, but she is my one, true love. Pictures of her is all we have left,
and she photographed so well... Lady Steam…
But none of us will ever feel her embrace or fall asleep to her
lonesome, melodic moans. If for none other nor that alone, all should weep.
Send not to know which signals to show
nor never to learn for whom is departing as her bell tolls... Lady Steam…
for one day it shall toll for thee
and me, the same as it did for she... Lady Steam…
As ours join the eternal chorus, of the voices on the wind...
I guess that's a plug. S'OK by me.
@@robertmiller5217 Thank you for your contribution. I was only born in 1985, but the SP was always my favorite. 4449 lifer. 👍
@@robertmiller5217 I'm actually sitting at the Roseville yard as I type this.
Wspaniały klasyk
I agree. SD7s and SD9s are legendary. Thanks for the comment.
great record
Danke for your comment; I have subscribed to your channel.
thx for your subscribed. I also subscribed. I love these "old" recordings of trains and locomotives.
At 6:30, that train is on the East bound for Chicago tracks and was filmed at the south end of Atlantic St. At 8:12, the photographer has moved to the Amtrak platform on the west side at the engine house on Church St, , still there and operational. At 8:10, we are now at the Sacramento Light Rail Station in the middle of I-80 at Watt Ave in North Sacramento. S.P. main is to the left a quarter mile, out of view. At 9:50, a different location, 1103 'B' Street in Sacramento. Looks the same .
Thanks for identifying the locations.
@@vidwilzvids9587 I live one block from the engine house at Circuit St and Ash St in Roseville. Great film !
Engineer JD O'Kane running the SP1525
Thanks for identifying Mr. O'Kane. He and the SD7 are recorded for posterity.
1505, and 1531 have such small fuel tanks. Are they used for yard switching ?
Here is a page that contains an explanation of the SP SD7/SD9 fuel tanks: www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,103313
2:47 Why such a little fuel tank?
SP SD7s were originally equipped with 2 fuel tanks, with the first one holding water for the steam generator as the SD7s were used as passenger units for the 50's. In the 60's the SD7s were demoted to yard duties so the water tank became redundant. Same story with a few SD9s, albeit they continued work on mainline and branchline trains into the 90s.
I like cabooses (cabeese) and all but no matter how you paint it orange and brown still makes a crummy Crummy.
The crews used to call the light colored ones (like SOO Line) "moving targets". Thanks for the comment.