Nostalgia & History > Santa Fe freight leaving Antioch 1961

An eastbound train leaves Antioch, California after leaving off a few cars on the team track. Did Santa Fe call trains leaving Richmond eastbound or southbound?

Robert Morris Photography
http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/index1.html

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Eastbound.

This is a shot of a train that was called the RIE (Richmond Industries East). Just picked up the empty chip racks from the Fibreboard paper mill; the chip gons are en route back to interchange with the Sierra RR at Oakdale.

Best regards,

Rob L.

Did any RR west of the Mississippi use
north-south timetable direction?

rob_l Wrote:

> This is a shot of a train that was called the RIE
> (Richmond Industries East). Just picked up the
> empty chip racks from the Fibreboard paper mill;
> the chip gons are en route back to interchange
> with the Sierra RR at Oakdale.

Did all the chips come from the Sierra? I thought I read that mills in the Antioch area also got chips that originated on the NWP, which were barged across the bay from Tiburon to Richmond before heading east.

...and is that a Volvo PV544 waiting at the crossing?

What a fine photo! Can you tell us what film/paper you used? That's a very sharp photo with just the right contrast.

HRGXguy,
Love to see such fine B&W work...please post more!

Hadn't heard of the RIE symbol. By the mid 60's that train/symbol was no longer used. The empties from fibreboard were generally picked up by the "Cab Hop" which was called on duty at Richmond every day at 5:30 PM. You would pick up the MTs, go to Mormon Yard, set them out, then wait for the WP to bring in the "GWS", which you now became. Sometimes a very long wait at Stockton for a very brief run to Riverbank and a crew change. The other train that handled local traffic was the Extra East, called on duty at Richmond at 4:30 AM, but generally didn't get out of town until after 6:00. This was a hard 16 hour slog to Riverbank with much work in Pittsburg/Antioch. The local out to that area was the ROT (Richmond Oakley Turn) on duty at 7:25AM. It was a sixteen hour job as well, but rarely ventured beyond East DuPont.

Don't know if the Santa Fe ever handled chip traffic off the NWP. By the time I became familiar with operations, the tunnel collapse on the NWP had caused all traffic for their south end to go via barge to Tiburon. Santa Fe barge went to Tiburon on Mondays and Thursday, sometimes with a second trip. It was almost all inbound finished lumber and drywall, with outbound MTs. I kind of doubt that the barge was ever used for this traffic because the couple of times I worked the Cab Hop we picked up a very lengthy cut of MT (50 cars, or so) Santa Fe gons with side extensions, modified for this traffic. It would have taken the barge and tug 5 trips to handle this many cars. Not sure of the destination after Stockton, but I do know the Riverbank/Oakdale job used an alco S-2 or S-4 (1500 or 2300 class with a a three man crew....don't know if they could handle that many cars.

As a further aside - all Valley Division freights, with the exception of locals, commonly used three unit sets of GP-7/9 for power prior to the arrival of the GP-30s.

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Did all the chips come from the Sierra? I thought
> I read that mills in the Antioch area also got
> chips that originated on the NWP, which were
> barged across the bay from Tiburon to Richmond
> before heading east.

Yes, many chips to the Antioch mill came from off the NWP. But this is an eastbound train that is picking up at Antioch. SP chip gon empties going back to Tiburon won't be picked up by this guy.

Best regards,

Rob L.