Nostalgia & History > quiet night at Bayshore

A few nights ago it was quite pleasant here in southern Oregon. It was one of those nights where sounds seem to carry further, aromas drifted further, and the normal sounds of the late evening seemed unusually quiet. It reminded me of similar evenigns at SP Bayshore Roundhouse. Here are a couple of shots I took around midnight on July 1, 1974. The sounds of cars being switched in the nearby yard seemed clearer and louder, and the few idling diesels purred in harmony. All gone now! - Tony J.

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A few days later a SP mechanic was busy working on a commute geep inside the roundhouse. Meanwhile a quarter-mile away two commute trains were about to pass each other just railroad East of Bayshore station. - Tony J.

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Thanks Tony. 2369 sure brings back memories as I spent a graveyard shift on her with a Coast Division engineer named Gorham Koeppe. He'd sometimes bring younger PLA members to work with him back in the days when you could get away with that.
You must have had a lot of good times back then.

Tom

Thanks Tom. Back then I was working for Safeway in San Francisco - usually starting at 1PM, 2PM or 3PM so my "lunch" time was often in the early evening. When working close enough to Bayshore I would often drive to the yard and park next to where Bayshore Tower once stood and watched the SP switch cars at night. Back then they didn't use radios - just hand signals with lanterns. They kept themselves warm with burning dunnage inside 55-gal. drums. The throbbing sound peculiar to FM H-12-44s pushing a cut of cars was wonderful. - Tony J.

Knockout stuff as always Tony, thanks for putting them out there.
—Mac

Nice shots Tony. I can almost feel that fog.


Nudge

Thank you for all those nice shots, was around then, but never saw Bayshore, and my relatives knew how crazy nuts I was about trains, then. What a wonderful idea to do a "Now & Then" shot of CalTrain (or what ever the heck it is this week) commuters passing on the same spot 36 years later.

I'm not in SF. otherwise I'd do it.