Nostalgia & History > Westbound Wednesday - SP Commute Service In Transition

From the days when SP was getting out of the SF - SJ commute service.
SP initially turned it over to the California Department of Transportation prior to the forming of Cal Train,
which was managed by Sam Trans, the local bus operator.
The fellow from the state of California who managed the operation was the late Elmer Hall who was a railfan & knew railroading.
First sequence is at Howest in far norther San Mateo. Upgrade track serving old San Mateo Feed & Fuel, later Pacific Readymix facility,
has been severed from the mainline but is still visible. In my younger days, I would spend time here watching the local freight powered by
GP9s & RS32s, in run eight shoving loads of gravel up to the plant. It was quite a show and would sometimes block the eastbound main
with a commute train and afternoon TBX waiting to the north blocking all the grade crossings.
The westbound Cal Train F40 powered train meet is Between Burlingame and Broadway. 
The F40 is shown as delivered with K5LA horn and upper oscolating lights. These features were specified by Eler Hall and his crew.
When the bus people took over, not knowing anything about rail, they followed high paid consultant advise and had the original horns
replace with awful sounding two bell horns mounted down low on the units, and eventually had the oscolating lights removed.
Little remains from where these videos were made in the 1980s. 
Sorry about to poor quality as the origianal source was VHS tape transferred to DVD many years ago.
Regards, Jim Evans

 

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Oh, another thing that has changed is ridership. Since the pandemic, very sad here in the Bay area. 
Notice all the people getting off of the eastbound commute in the last sequence.
Regards, Jim Evans

Suspect the sad ridership now is higher than
in the 1970s-1980s.

FiveChime Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh, another thing that has changed is ridership.
> Since the pandemic, very sad here in the Bay
> area. 
> Notice all the people getting off of the eastbound
> commute in the last sequence.
> Regards, Jim Evans

But 101 and 280 are just as jammed as they ever were.

here's two views of Howest from the trackmaps:the Peninsula 1965-74 Collection. First is the 1974 aerial mosaic with the circa 1965-74 trackmap--1974 SPINS data from the Dome. Second image is similar perspective but with the 3D buildings and terrain layers turned on. 

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No need to apologize.  Quality is fine.  Appreciate the post.   I often wish we had 4k GoPro's back then but this is great considering what  we had.

sphogger

Nice catch of the experimental paint scheme car(s?)
Loved the echos too
SR

Great video footage, man I miss that gryalite!

Great time capsule catch.
Nice horn/echo sound
Nice VHS to Digital conversion too!

No need to apologize,
VHS is "lossy" anyway in its original format, and a little more "lossy" when converted to digital, but hey its all we had to work with back then, short of using an 8mm film camera.

Really like the prime mover sound too at the end when the train departs.

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

Not to mention keeping the camera rolling until he knocked down that last visible signal.  Nice work and thanks for sharing.

Excellent footage. Thanks for sharing...