Nostalgia & History > Remnants of the Lead to Iowa Street Between 22nd and 23rd

Here are pictures of the 22nd St. station today on the Caltrain, formerly 23rd St. Station on the SP commute line, showing the remnants of the ramp out of the cut in Potrero Hill between tunnels 1 and 2. The ramp came out on Iowa St. and connected to the WP main near 25th and the ATSF's tracks that ran on Iowa to Indiana and over the SP main on Mariposa and down the hill to 16th St. The ramp appears to have been a ballast deck trestle. In the 1935 aerial photos it the ramp is gone but the tops of the piles of the trestle bents can be seen.

In this photo you can see the trestle ramp from the portal of tunnel 1.  http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/attachments/fullsize/1011000/90.002.0322.jpg

Both of the bridges and the concrete retaining wall remain today. 

1. Looking at the retaining wall where the ramp was. A black tape of some kind can be seen on the wall above the grafitti covering paint. Maybe some kind of sealer?
2. Looking at smae from closer to tracks.
3. The lip of the ramp 



 

More images of the concrete retaining wall. 

After stopping at 23rd St. (or 22nd St. under the Caltrain revisionist regime) during  much of my career, I had no idea...

Thanks!

EO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/15 05:40 by hogheaded.

Doesn't look like a station I would like to be at after dark.
JB

Good Follow-up. Thanks!

Cheers,
Jack

Thanks for posting, another thought was maybe the ramp was for tunnel construction and pushed cars up this to dump down the hill as fill.

That could certainly be true. I did read some articles about Santa Fe's filling of China Basin in 1900-10 period. For example, a company involved in the filling got a license to build a storage track  for one year on Iowa St. along Santa Fe's tracks to store cars used in the filling effort. It's possible the SP sent some of their dirt to the Santa Fe. 

But I read in the articles that Bayshore yard was constructed with the fill from the 1907 Cutoff excavations. Whether that means all of the fill or not who knows. 

But look at the 1915 map at David Rumsey. http://rumsey.geogarage.com/maps/g0140000.html 

It shows that between Bayshore and Mission Bay there were only two leads off the SP main--Quint St. and Iowa St., the subject of this post. Both of these leads went not to SP trackage but Santa Fe-owned tracks. To me it seems like it must have been part of the plans for interchange between SP and Santa Fe and the WP. 

Maybe the planners of the 1907 Bayshore Cutoff thought that in addition to putting the SP car ferries out of business, the WP and Santa Fe would start seding their SF-bound freight via the SP too and these leads would provide for handy interchanges right off the mainline?

Interesting what you find when you really take a close look around.  Especially is SF, where a lot of places are built over/rebuilt.  Nice to find the small historic left overs.

Gary

Fascinating post..thanks for sahring this...

When did the SP and ATSF start interchanging in the yard on Illinois St? On the map you provided the Santa Fe Slip is further north and the SP slip closer to 16th St. Maybe when Santa Fe finished the China Basin yard and they built the new interchange yard it made this connection with the steep grade obsolete. Maybe you can tie in the dates based on when that new yard opened.