Nostalgia & History > Runnymede: Long Last Dumbarton Spur

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/18 14:04 by phthithu.

Thank you for the history about a spur and industrial area I knew nothing about until now.

Interesting information, is there a date on the attached map? The early Peninsula stories and maps are of interest, check out the Bayshore Blvd on the map which would fit with the current Hiway 101, called Bayshore to many. It's interesting seeing the intersecting streets that are hidden behind a sound wall now. My father would Commute on Bayshore from the City to Sunnyvale in the 50's and had a few stories about the old road and then the improved road. He also rode the Commutes when it fit into his super-commuter schedule.

This is an interesting bit of history that had escaped me, and I suspect, most everyone else. The wye was a bit of a puzzler until I checked a Peninsula SPINS book. It shows that spurs serving industries "bridge-side"  of Milepost 28 (at Marsh Road, a short distance west of the end of double track) were numbered and grouped with industries on the east side of Dumbarton Bridge, which presumably means that this spur was served by crews out of Newark. Hence the wye, one would guess. I don't have the applicable SPINS book, unfortunately (spur is in Region 2, Zone 22). The area is not covered by Sanborn maps, as far as I can tell.

I find that there's a nice illustrated write-up of Runnymede, which you perhaps referenced, in a book called Shaping Communities, Vol. 1, by Carter L. Hudgins. Google Books has several preview pages, sans photos, and I've just located a couple copies of it (one of which I purchased) for four bucks on eBay. I'll be taking a drive out there with the book at first opportunity.

Thanks for the revelation!

EO

The Borrman Steel building still has tracks running through it.  They told me long ago that the last delivery of steel via rail was in the early 90's, but he said that was just a guess.

I only met "old man" Borrman a few times before his plane crash.  I remember getting some material there right after his passing.  Was really sad when he was gone, as he still had plenty of energy for his age.  He loved talking planes.

Lots of material I use for GGRM projects has come from Borrman's.  Nice to have a family business around that knows your needs.

garrett

Thanks for this bit of history. Google Street view still shows rails crossing the street at Bay.

Hmmm, 1000 hens on a one acre lot, that's 42 square feet per bird.  Probably halve that, since the owner has to live somewhere and there will be storage and staging facilities for feed, water, waste, etc.  I guess he wasn't going for the free range market.  I wonder how big his hen houses would have been.

Wasn't Hiller Helicopters close by in the Fifties?  Did they bring in materials by rail?  Also, a question.  What is the latest on scrapping or rebuilding the railroad bridge?

Ed

Auburn_Ed Wrote:
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>  What is the latest on scrapping or
> rebuilding the railroad bridge?
>
> Ed

Ed, this link ought to answer your question. The short of it is that the Dumbarton Corridor project is in limbo for lack of money.

Another_Ed

Got my first helo ride at Hiller in a ram-jet mini-copter.  I think it was called the "Hiller Hornet".

Ed

 

Thanks for all the info and clips. I have done a little research on similar topic, but focused more on Redwood Harbor which experienced similar rail and industrial development about the same time, but am vacationing in PNW presently w/o access to files, so won't clutter this thread with that material.

Steve Donaldson
Pacific Grove, CA

That second article is intriguing where it says that SP was constructing a depot, presumably for freight, since the line never had passenger service (Am I right on this?). The questions is where - at the junction (Ravenswood on TT's) or at the end of the branch? I've never encoutered any mention of a Ravenswood depot before this. I checked old USGS topos on the off hand chance tht one might show a structure at the junction, but the 1895 map of the area was not updated until 1940, a large gap in history. Below is the 1943 version of the 1940 topo, which shows Cooley Landing, but no structure at the junction. It also shows only the west leg of the wye. (Google maps clearly shows property lines outlining the wye, BTW.) The June 13, 1937 ETT (below) shows no wye at Ravenswood, so it was already out of service by the time of the 1938 Thomas map. Another spur of which I was unaware is depicted in the map, heading northward just east of the Bayshore freeway. The best that I can make of it is that it was used to fill in the marsh at the site of today's Facebook headquarters.

EO

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phthithu Wrote:
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> Another spur off the Dumbatron Cutoff. 29
> September 1917. Article in the Sausalito News
> about a spur to the base hospital at Camp Fremont.
> Says construction of spur and agency was underway.
> Camp Fremont was abandoned immediately after the
> armistice. Would be interesting to find out how
> far they go with this spur in the fall of 1917. 

Interesting, as Camp Fremont, proper, anyway was located on the southwest side of the Peninsula Main. Here's a poorly-reproduced 1919 map extracted out of an old Congressional Serial Set that shows the deal. That's San Francisquito Creek running along the bottom, and note the extensive trackage. In my slightly larger copy, I can not make out a hospital location, but your article suggests a different location. The present VA Hospital is located about 1.5 miles northeast of the Menlo train depot, reasonably close to the Dumbarton Main. Perhaps that is where the "great base hospital" and remount station were located. My father spoke of his brother, Palo Alto's town blacksmith at the time, as having done work for the army during WWI "up around Atherton", and I always though that he was mistaken. Now it's looking as if he was correct.

Re the electrics: It's not surprising that rumors surfaced about the Peninsular extending to Runnymede. The Bay Area was gripped with interurban fever about as tightly as anywhere in the U.S. - to a sometimes nonsensical extent. Two personal favorite examples of this down in the Santa Clara Valley: In 1904 the Campbell Visitor changed its name to the Campbell Interurban Press (I've included the masthead below because it is so cool, even if off topic), and about the time that the Dumbarton was constructed, a group formed to build an interurban line from San Jose to New Almaden, even though business was so light that SP was running only two mixed trains per week on their Almaden branch. Alviso was another ill-advised and ultimately unfulfilled destination.

This is a great thread, BTW.

EO

 

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Well, here's an unexpected development that I just ran across researching something completely different: SP apparently did indeed run Peninsular tracks from Palo Alto to Ravenswood in 1912 as a part of a war with the Key System, but a truce was called before operations commenced. Without researching further, I speculate that this line may have formed the east leg of the Redwood Jct. wye.

EO

Image from ‪The San Francisco Bay Area‬ - ‪A Metropolis in Perspective‬



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/16 12:52 by hogheaded.

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Here's something that I would investigate if I currently wasn't so far away. The National Archives's San Francisco branch has Army Quartemaster Corps. 1918 construction records for Camp Fremont. Scroll down to RG 92 on the linked page. I'll go there in December to investigate if nobody beats me to it.

According to an online Nat'l Archives article, some troops stationed at Camp Fremont (which was a National Guard training center) wound up going to Vladovostock, instead of Europe, to rescue war equipment and materials spread along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, sort of a cultural exchange I guess, as I've read in newspapers that, later on, SP ran trainloads (with the help of SF Belt) of defeated White Russian troops to Fort Mason for processing.

EO