Nostalgia & History > Train 51 at Bakersfield

Repost by request. Photos by Bernard Levine taken at Bakersfield in September 1965. Hope you don’t mind.

#1-3 Train 51 with 6039/6029/6034/6389.

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Don't mind at all! Never enough early day SP.

Yardclerk

No complaints here...didn't see it before, glad to see it now! Steve

I esp. like the last shot with the paperboy on his bike watching the train--the best of the three! Not a static shot at all--lots going on with the PA's smoking, highballing out of town! Shots that capture vanishing Americana are what it's all about--thanks for sharing.

I do mind. Your effort has further burdened the available space on my hard drive..Thanks;)

Nice work and photo #3 is a timeless image of kids and trains. Is that overpass in the background highway 99?

hogantunnel Wrote:
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> Is that overpass in the background
> highway 99?

Don't offhand recall what street it is, but for sure not 99.

Of the many times I saw the San Joaquin Daylight, I can recall seeing it powered by a 4-8-4, a set of F7s or modern diesels. But I never saw a PA unit pulling it. That has to be a rare photo.

The overpass is Beale Ave. 99 is about a mile or two behind the photographer.

These photos appear to be the inspiration for Red's train-sim screen-shot photo essay on The San Joaquin Daylight over on the Railfan Electronics board: June 15, regards SP PA 6008, most especially shots # 21-26. Perhaps more so East (compass south) of Bakersfield than west (compasss north) but PA's were common on that train. Well, PAs were far from "common", but their presence was not un-common on that run. AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

agentatascadero Wrote:
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> These photos appear to be the inspiration for
> Red's train-sim screen-shot photo essay on The San
> Joaquin Daylight over on the Railfan Electronics
> board: June 15, regards SP PA 6008, most
> especially shots # 21-26. Perhaps more so East
> (compass south) of Bakersfield than west (compasss
> north) but PA's were common on that train. Well,
> PAs were far from "common", but their presence was
> not un-common on that run. AA

Quite right--they were!!! And like PROPULDUDE attested, John has done his part to help overload my hard drive!!! But, as they say, "No pain, no gain." ;-)

The thread to the "Virtual SP San Joaquin Daylight" can be found at: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,1426987

John posted the shots, and I tried to recreate them in MSTS Format. Without reposting all 26-plus shots (posted while waiting by the phone for a call to take an NS GE C40-9W down UP rails--LOL--it smoked rather like the Alcos, would you believe it?), combined steam and diesel, I thought I'd add several of the particular photos that I tried to recreate in "V-Scale," based on John's original post of these several months ago. Incidentally, in John's older post, he also had some shots of No. 51 at Walong, on the downhill slope east of Summit and Tehachapi wherein the SP 6039 and 2 sister PAs had an SP FP7 in the trail. Since THAT precedent was broken, I simply made up a consist of a PA-PB-FP7-F7B-FP7 locomotive consist (slightly different mixture, and, an extra unit) for a "swollen holiday consist of 18-cars plus the SP Business Car "SUNSET" bringing up the markers. Thanks for the repost, and, indeed, the INSPIRATION, John!!!

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(1) A slightly different angle at Bakersfield in MSTS Format. I tried, but couldn't quite get the exact same angles of John's Bernard Levine shots as the excellent 3DTrainStuff payware route is based in the UP Era, so, I had to crop out the UP Shield above the Bakersfield Station Sign. 3DTS, did, however, quite accurately depict the achitecture of the Bakersfield, CA Depot and the Beale Ave. Overpass behind the train (we can also see that some secondary trackage that existed in 1965 no longer exists today...but...the "feeling" is definitely there):

(2) No kids on bicycles on this day, but, the crew change was captured next to SP PA 6008 West, where the engineer and conductor conducted a quick job briefing, compared watches, and, engaged in a bit of friendly banter prior to the command "Highball, No. 51!":

(3) The Alcos (which I believe had less than two years left on the SP at the time of John's Bakersfield and Walong photos, as he also posted some later shots of the PAs being humped as "dead weight" at Taylor Yard circa 1967) and high-mileage EMD F-Units smoke it up departing Bakersfield, leaving 25 MPH station trackage and already in Notch 8 for the high speed territory ahead:

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jtrim817 Wrote:
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> The overpass is Beale Ave. 99 is about a mile or
> two behind the photographer.


Where is the current BFD station in relation to these photos??

Railrev Wrote:
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> jtrim817 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The overpass is Beale Ave. 99 is about a mile
> or
> > two behind the photographer.
>
>
> Where is the current BFD station in relation to
> these photos??

Same place.

V

SLOCONDR

> Where is the current BFD station in relation to
> these photos??

You mean the Amtrak station, on the SFe? Maybe ... a mile and a half to the SW?

IC_2024 Wrote:
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> I esp. like the last shot with the paperboy on his
> bike watching the train--the best of the three!
> Not a static shot at all--lots going on with the
> PA's smoking, highballing out of town! Shots that
> capture vanishing Americana are what it's all
> about--thanks for sharing.

A bit of Norman Rockwell.

Westbound wrote:

>Of the many times I saw the San Joaquin Daylight, I can recall seeing it powered by a 4-8-4, a set of F7s or modern diesels. But I never saw a PA unit pulling it. That has to be a rare photo.


Alco PAs were the regular power on the San Joaquin Daylight from late 1953 to early January 1955. Many photos of the train pulled by PAs in that period have been taken. In early January 1955, due to dieselization of passenger trains on the Coast Line, the PAs were replaced by 4-8-4s north of Bakersfield and F7s south of Bakersfield.

Alco PAs were again regularly assigned to the train in the summer of 1961. After that, they would be seen on the train only a few times a year. It seems that Bernard Levine has managed to photograph almost every such occurance.

agentatascadero wrote:

> Perhaps more so East (compass south) of Bakersfield than west (compasss north) but PA's were common on that train.


Since the PAs ran through between Oakland and Los Angeles on the San Joaquin Daylight, there were used north of Bakersfield just as much as south of Bakersfield (however, on the Bakersfield-Los Angeles segment, Alco PA sets got an additional A-unit as a helper, which was taken off or put on at Bakersfield in the late-1953 to early-1955 period).

Railrev Wrote:
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> Where is the current BFD station in relation to
> these photos??

West of downtown.

SP's stuff was (is) in East Bakersfield. That's Baker Street that the train's crossing as soon as it leaves the depot.

JohnSweetser Wrote:
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> It seems that Bernard Levine has managed to
> photograph almost every such occurance.

Kinda makes ya wanna rub him for good luck! Well, maybe not...