Nostalgia & History > San Francisco Industry Tracks North Side of Potrero

1.15th curve onto Utah
2. Alameda curve onto vermont
3. Tracks crossing Alameda and Vermont intersection diagonally



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/14 12:18 by sliderslider.

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4. Alameda St at Potrero
5 Spur at Alameda and Utah
6 Potrero St. curve onto Alameda

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7: 15th St. spur at San Bruno
8: Tracks crossing intersection of Vermont and Alameda diagonally

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9 Rhode Island and 16th: the ROW block that the Conversation was filmed in. I'm researching some of these spots and found this image on TO, one of weathers: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/attachments/fullsize/871000/64490255.jpg
10 Crossbuck in ROW alley on Rhode Island south of 16th
11 same side view



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/14 01:58 by sliderslider.

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12 ROW alley on Rhode Island near 16th

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13: ROW on Missippi and Mariposa west side of street
14: looking east
15: East side of street tracks in ROW alley

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16: 88 Arkansas St., off 16th
17:same
18: Carolina at 16th



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/14 01:51 by sliderslider.

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19: Bryant near Division ROW alley
20: same
21: Florida near Division looking at ROW alley toward Bryant

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When did this end?

I am not into wholesale thievery, but the cross buck and the signals would be in the back of my truck quickly, ready to be restored in a yard or donation to a museum.

Fantastic stuff!

Of course you know I enjoy your series of photos in The City. Last March my wife and I only had a short amount of time to look around after documenting the original SP mainline, but we did find a few spots, but the impossible parking situation downtown stopped me from getting out to take photos. One spot I managed to capture is this at the corners of Front and Green steets. This is former State Belt Line of California trackage.

What bugs me are the many locations I remember seeing remnants as a young man. There were several near the Espee Third & Townsend depot where the SP tracks still had diamonds left in them where the Market Street Railway/Muni streetcar lines once crossed them. Alas, with only 24 or 36 shots in a roll of slide film (or even less with other B&W format film), I had to choose between train action or track remnants I thought would be there forever. Not a problem with digital film now.

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Great stuff. I too like the remains of what was. I remember seeing trains at some of those locations as a 5 year old kid visiting relatives in the bay area. They scared this 5 year old as you could not see the rails in some loctions and a lot was done at night. It looked liked the train coming down a street with no rail and the LOUD squealing on the curves. At some intersections the sidewalk conformed to the RR tracks and it almost seemed they were derailed and coming right at you ! Thanks to all for sharing !
Tom

Very interesting (to me especially, as I work in SF). Photo #12 looks like something you would see at the Modern Art Museum.
- Eric B.

Neat shots.

A lot of that trackage under the freeway should be ex-Western Pacific. One of the WP freight houses still stands, although modified.

Here is a shot of WP Alco S2 560 pulling a switch job across Mariposa Street at Pennsylvania. Photo from the archives of the Feather River Rail Society.

Z

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Slider,

Take a look at these SPINS maps of SF.

http://www.wx4.org/to/foam/sp/spins/spins_san_francisco_opt.pdf

J.

J. when I looked at the SPINS it made clear that there was so much track around San Francisco it's amazing that that entire way of doing business evaporated to the point where there is really a single old-style carload customer in SF on Carroll St. I guess more amazing is the fact that there is still customers in SF at all considering how complete the contraction of the carload business was.

CPRR Wrote:
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> I am not into wholesale thievery, but the cross
> buck and the signals would be in the back of my
> truck quickly, ready to be restored in a yard or
> donation to a museum.


I know what you mean although this one looks like it was put there by someone wishing to preserve it. I heard from a museum volunteer about them receiving an SP concrete phone booth from a private individual. It had been taken from some disused ROW. Well, the city that owned the disused ROW and it's weed overgrown phone booth found the booth was missing and found out that the museum had it. They demanded they return the booth and so it was returned. So it would probably be impossible to get this item into a museum collection without permission of the property owner.

sounds like an air raid siren in my town that cant be taken down because no one knows who owns it!

zephyrus Wrote:
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> Neat shots.
>
> A lot of that trackage under the freeway should be
> ex-Western Pacific. One of the WP freight houses
> still stands, although modified.
>
> Here is a shot of WP Alco S2 560 pulling a switch
> job across Mariposa Street at Pennsylvania. Photo
> from the archives of the Feather River Rail
> Society.
>
> Z


Here is that same view today.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.76405,-122.393769,3a,90y,302.64h,81.99t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1se-QPZ9qL5fPiHbHJBYVHXA!2e0