Western Railroad Discussion > Street Running Saturday: Redwood City, CA

UP's South San Francisco-based LSF-51 heads south on Caltrain's main to Redwood
Jct. in the morning hours three times a week(M-W-F) in order to head out to the
Port of Redwood City where Cemex is the primary customer.  Once on the Redwood 
Harbor Industrial Lead they take on eight blocks of street running(much of it in
a curbed center median) on Chestnut Street to reach the port.

Yesterday's local is seen at 11:00 headed for the port behind the UP1466-1088 with
a train of cement loads as they approach and cross Broadway.  Busy cross streets
such as Middlefield and Broadway have the train movements protected only by traffic
signal synchronization(and a few crossbucks).

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They made quick work out at the port and are seen 75 minutes later crossing busy
Veterans Blvd. and entering Chestnut en route back to Redwood Jct..  Final view
was taken this past April(the 1088 is a regular on this job) as the crew spots 
loads(originating Victorville, CA) and picks up empties just outside the Cemex 
facility.  Switching can be monitored on 161.460.

With the nearby Lehigh Permanente plant either closed or closing the Bay Area may
need to source more cement from outside the region.  Cemex appears to have the capacity 
to handle this traffic at its silos in Redwood City.

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Very interesting series!

Larry

Nice catch, a clear shot at that intersection is a rare thing especially on a Friday.
Heard that gas station had the lowest prices on the Peninsula, but it's a pretty shady looking place.

There had been a County website describing the history of the cement plant out in the harbor. At one time they paid for seashells being collected from the shorelines. The shells were ground up for the calcium, but that was back in the SF earthquake days.
t4p.

Good stuff. Went to catch them Monday but missed them or they didn't show. There was a ship that appeared to be unloading concrete on-site and I wondered if Cemex made other arrangements due to the possible strike. 

Went to the marine traffic dot com site and see that today they have the Asahi Ocean at the dock, or near it. It looks like a self unloader so I'm not sure what it's carrying, The rock shipments do come in from British Columbia on self unloaders. I checked the other day and found one of rock carrying ships at anchorage near the Bay Bridge. The port does have other types of ships and cargo so there's no certainty of what's going on in this case.

Back in the SP era the rock would come in from the huge quarry near Watsonville and they pretty well beat up the street trackage. There are some stories and photos about the old trackage in the TO archives.

Using the vessel tracking websites the ships can be tracked all the way back to previous ports. The rock ships can be traced to the harbor on the northern part of Vancouver Island. I check this every so often but don't really spend a lot of time on it, amazing amount of info available.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:421820/zoom:11

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TCnR Wrote:
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> Back in the SP era the rock would come in from the
> huge quarry near Watsonville and they pretty well
> beat up the street trackage. There are some
> stories and photos about the old trackage in the
> TO archives.

Not mentioned in my post is that a second train operates on the
Chestnut St. trackage but always under cover of darkness.
The Watsonville Jct. based Rock Job picks up aggregate loads
at the Graniterock quarry in Logan and deliveries them on weeknights
to the Graniterock facility at the south end of Seaport Blvd.

This is about a mile south of Port of Redwood City property and is the land
just north of Blomquist on the attached map.

This traffic is easily spotted running in these WFRX hoppers.

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/22 13:53 by milepost20.

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