Nostalgia & History > Train Masters in the starting blocks

Train's 130-132-136 are raring to go with thier homeward bound city workers. Hanging around San Francisco's Third & Townsend depot around 5pm watching the fleet depart was quite a sight.

Robert Morris Photography

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On your marks, get set, gooooooooo...........

Kent in CArmel Valley

Hey, great pictures. The SP sure loved those Train Masters. Thanks for the memories.

Jim
Hatboro, PA​

There are first encounters in life one never forgets; my first encounter with a TM ranks up there among them.
—Mac

It really was quite a sight.  As a teen, it was thrill to watch "the fleet" depart every three minutes, usually with a Train Master on the point.  By the early 70s, I was fortunate to become part of that action, even though by then, ridership was on the decline, the trains were shorter, and the TMs were eventually replaced by SDP45s and 40s. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/15 16:49 by CPCoyote.

Now THAT is a photograph !!!

Great photo Mr.Bob,

My first encounter with a Train Master was on the Coast Mail No. 92 coming into to The LA area at Santa Susana Pass one late afternoon in 1958.
Alas, no camera to hand!!
Possibly came into LA for wheel turning.

--Jim Baker

Great photo Mr.Bob,

My first encounter with a Train Master was on the Coast Mail No. 92 coming into to The LA area at Santa Susana Pass one late afternoon in 1958.
Alas, no camera to hand!!
Possibly came into LA for wheel turning.

--Jim Baker

Great photo of a vanished vista.  That is quite a climb to the front; 6 vertical steps.  No slope or very little.

Don Bowen
Saint Helena, CA

Train number 130 was the first of the afternoon rush hour block of trains that left the 3rd and Townsend stations at 3 minutes intervals, with the first departing SF at 5:14 PM.  Train 130 ran nonstop to the California Avenue station in Palo Alto.   Train 132 departed SF at 5:17 PM and  ran nonstop to, I believe, Redwood City.   Train 134 departed SF at 5:20 PM and ran nonstop to, I believe, San Mateo.    I interviewed the SP manager in charge of commuter train services in 1973 at his office in San Francisco (as part of a summer job I had with the California Air Resources Board Research Section in Sacramento), then road a commuter train with him southbound at the end of his workday.  He detrained at San Carlos (near where he lived), and I continued to San Jose; then returned to SF on a northbound "all-stops" local shortly after my arrival in San Jose.

I remember him telling me that the railroad advertised that with this arrangement of train scheduling, most commuters could leave work in downtown SF at 5 PM and reach their homes on the SF Peninsula by 6 PM.   I believe the average weekday ridership at that time was about 11,000.

Fabulous picture, as always, but the one thing pictures can't capture is the sound the FM opposed-piston engines made.  Truly unique and sublime when they were notched up.

Rick