Nostalgia & History > Watsonville Jct. ready track....part deux

Here are a few more shots of engines on the ready track at Watsonville Junction, 10-31-75. I apologize for the front/rear half photos of a couple of the units. These are detail shots. The full shot of the unit was probably pulled for our SP Coastline program and are in the program. If someone would like to see the single shot of the whole unit let me know and I will dig it out of the program. Otherwise you will have to use photoshop to put the two pieces together to make a whole unit.

1 - GP9 #3570
2 - Right rear half of GP9 #3656
3 - Right front half of GP9 #3656

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1 - left front half of GP9 #3560
2 - Left rear half of GP9 #3560

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Here are a couple of bonus shots.

1 - SD45 #9093 and SW1500 #2694 lead 77 cars eastbound out of Watsonville Jct yard.
2 - SP SW1500 #2694 switching in the yard. Has two cars and I apologize for those yellow and gray things. But this was back when cabeese, and especially pool cabeese, were very common.

Do have shots of the small service facility there as well as a few of the remaining SP buildings and roundhouse remnants that were still there. I am glad I took them now.

C.C.Chas.

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Wow, thanks for the pics!!

Although, the two switchers are MP15DC's. Very rare out west as I thought they were all assigned to the Cotton Belt route for most of their careers. I too thought there were SW1500's at first. Cool catch.

mcdeo Wrote:
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> Although, the two switchers are MP15DC's. Very
> rare out west as I thought they were all assigned
> to the Cotton Belt route for most of their
> careers.

The DC's - 2690 thru 2701 - were purchased for and originally assigned to the Western Division Switcher Pool (known as "Pool A").

As trivia, two now work the the Joint Powers Board on work trains on the San Francisco peninsula.

They went into service on the Western Division in 1975

Learn something new everyday! Thanks for the update.

How about the MP15AC's? Where were they initially assigned too?

topper Wrote:
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> The DC's - 2690 thru 2701 - were purchased for and
> originally assigned to the Western Division
> Switcher Pool (known as "Pool A").
>

Hmm.. what year did these MP15DCs disappear/get reassigned from the Western Division/SF Bay Area. It seemed rather sudden to me back then. Was it 1979, or earlier?

Cheers,
Harry

mcdeo Wrote:
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> How about the MP15AC's? Where were they initially
> assigned too?

No.

The four Slug Mothers, 2732 thru 2735, mated with slugs 1010 thru 1013, were tried as hump motors at several locations on the Western Lines - Tucson, Roseville and Eugene, for sure.

The rest of the AC's tended to stay east of Tucson until the Switcher Pools were abolished and the switchers started to scatter. Now it's common to find the remaining AC's just about anywhere switchers are still used.

tracktime Wrote:
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> Hmm.. what year did these MP15DCs disappear/get
> reassigned from the Western Division/SF Bay Area.
> It seemed rather sudden to me back then. Was it
> 1979, or earlier?

Later than that. All 12 didn't leave at one time. Ask Tony Johnson; he'd know.