Nostalgia & History > SP X-6339 east passing the Selby Smelter 1961

Now here's a line side business that would make a neat model. You could spot box car's, gondolas,tank cars & ore cars and it probably wouldn't take up to much space. This was quite an imposing sight when it was in business. This location is just a few miles west of Crockett of course now there isn't even a sign of any of these structures. I think there may be a slag pile still there but it sure made an interesting back ground for rail photography

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

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Wow Bob. You scored big on this one. This is the first time I've seen the smelter this close-up before.

Great subject matter in that shot Bob, probably one of your best yet. I've always thought the Black Widows looked really cool in freight service as well. Thanks for sharing this one.

Kent in CArmel Valley

I agree, one of your best. Lots of interesting industrial detail, great lighting, nice gray tones....a classic view of industrial nitty gritty that happens to have a great view of a black widow covered wagon. Need to go back and look some more, I might come up with some more superlatives.

JBWX

I'm digging into my own superlatives list and have run through them all even before I got started, struggling to find one that matches the quality of this image. I always enjoy tight, compact, multi-dimensional industrial scenes like this. But with Black Widow F's leading a mixed freight to boot, oh wow!

One of your very best, ever...and that's saying something. Thank you!

MC
Muskegon, Michigan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/17 19:33 by ironmtn.

WOW! Never knew the operation was that big. All paved under now, is it considered a "super-fund" EPA site?

Bromine tank car lurking in the background?

wpdude Wrote:
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> WOW! Never knew the operation was that big. All paved under now, is it considered a "super-fund" EPA site?


Surprisingly not. But it was bad enough to justify that asphalt cap over the entire site.

Neat shot, and I always liked the black widow scheme on any unit. I'm 2800 miles east, so where is it, what company did the smelting, and which SP line was it on? Thanx

JLinDE Wrote:
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> Neat shot, and I always liked the black widow scheme on any unit. I'm 2800 miles east, so where
> is it, what company did the smelting, and which SP line was it on? Thanx

Selby, CA, at the north east corner of the San Francisco Bay Area. Along the waters of the Carquinez Strait and SP's Cal-P line. It was American Smelting & Refining. The plant was closed in 1971 and razed over the course of the next several years. Today there is just a big asphalt cap over the entire area. It is easily seen from passing Amtrak trains.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0492522,-122.2527168,3a,26.5y,33.62h,89.71t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swWwpZpM1ApbbMZh_rYll2w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

TonyJ wrote:

> This is the first time I've seen the smelter this close-up before.

Really? Photobob posted the same photo on 9/26/2005 (also, the smelter shows up in numerous other photos photobob took and posted on Trainorders)

I love that view of the Selby Smelter, especially with Black Widows leading the way! My Dad worked in the Selby Smelter for about 25 years in charge of the acid plant. The plant was designed to remove sulfur dioxide from the smelter gasses. The larger tank car in Bob's photo was where the sulfur dioxide was loaded into tank cars for shipment. I worked in the smelter the summer of 1961 and filled in at the blast furnace, zinc plant, silver refinery, lead refinery, and the wharf. The smelter got almost all of its concentrate ore from Peru via large ore ships. Stevedores were bussed in from San Francisco to unload the ship using clamshell buckets. My job was to load dump trucks with ore via wharf side ore bins and conveyor belts and to collect an oar sample from each truckload. Our family lived in Tormey, the company town, which was about a half mile west on the Cal-P.

Good times, great memories.

You're right, Bob. This would make a great model layout. Is that Mt.Tamalpais in the distance?

Yes, Mount Tamalpais, across the Bay in Marvelous Marin! Cheers, Fergie

Anybody know what metals ASRCO was smelting here? Where the ore came from? I didn't know about this one.

BTW, "pave and wave" remedies are common at contaminated smelter sites. The soil contamination can be severe, but it's often in a chemical form that immobilizes it, so if the company still has control of the land, they can often cut off exposure to humans and wildlife with a simple cap. If somebody comes along and wants to redevelop, then you put together a plan to get the nasty soil out without toxing anybody in the process.

march_hare Wrote:
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> Anybody know what metals ASRCO was smelting here?
> Where the ore came from? I didn't know about this
> one.
>


Through all of it's years they brought in ore from all over the west, but eventually is better known for high volume copper ore from South America. I've done a few Google searches where the site is named for gold and silver from the classic 49'er sites. There's also lots of references to Lead and Lead clean-up. The smokestack was at one time the world's tallest smoke stack, there's a Wiki that lists smokestacks. At one time the smelter was owned by the same company that owned the Tacoma smelter. Google seems to have cleaned up their search results so that a lot of that historical info doesn't show up in the first dozen pages anymore. The smelter also shows up in searches for the town of Tormey, which leads into other stories about other small towns around Mt Diablo. Another one of the situations of cleansing history.