Railroaders' Nostalgia > Jim Canaris, SP/Caltrain

Jim Canaris, SP switchman, Commute trainman and Caltrain engineer passed away last Monday. I have no further details.

Jim and I go way back, and we later attended Amtrak's Choo Choo U together. He moved to Placerville after retiring, and until the last couple of years we kept in touch by phone.

Adios amigo! The family grows smaller...

EO
 

That's too bad, I was just thinking of him this past week when I was speaking with Brad Fick on the telephone and we were cracking up at his rather unorthodox way of retiring.  Brad commented that he was on the crew that day when they were looking for Jim to make a yard move, all because he got mad at Mike Howard about the broken light bulb in the engineers bathroom in SF, that was priceless.

Jim was one of my instructors, we had a odd incident with a fellow that always would cut infront of the engine at Morgan Hill right in the foul instead of using the pedestrian walkway, Jim was worried he would trip and we would run over the guy.  So one day he spotted him doing this, said for me to blow the horn, next thing I look out the window and this passenger has a rather large rock that he is going to chuck into my window, Jim is standing over me using a bunch of explatives telling the guy to throw the rock and he would regret it.  Eventually the passenger dropped the rock, we proceeded on our way, but when we got into San Jose we went to the Amtrak PD and the entire crew filled out a report against the guy, turns out while we were doing so they got a call from the local Sheriff's agency down there for Morgan Hill that the train crew assault the passenger and he was going to press charges on us.  Eventually upon reading statements from us, that plan of getting us on assualt back fired as Amtrak PD went after the passenger, for at minimum tresspassing, but I think there was an attempted assault in there for the rock he was going to chuck at us.

Jim was a great guy, never a dull moment with him, I'm sorry to hear of his passing, I will share the unfortunate news with those that may not be in the know.

Frank

hogheaded Wrote:
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> Jim Canaris, SP switchman, Commute trainman and
> Caltrain engineer passed away last Monday. I have
> no further details.
>
> Jim and I go way back, and we later attended
> Amtrak's Choo Choo U together. He moved to
> Placerville after retiring, and until the last
> couple of years we kept in touch by phone.
>
> Adios amigo! The family grows smaller...
>
> EO
>  

Thanks for the news.  

More about Jim on the Western page from Feb 2.

Posted from iPhone

CPCoyote Wrote:
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> More about Jim on the Western page from Feb 2.
>
> Posted from iPhone

Thanks Mike. That's a great photo of him.

EO