Nostalgia & History > Depot Friday: Santa Fe Pinole, CA

Pinole, CA had and still has two railroads.  Southern Pacific's Pinole, CA depot along the shore of San Pablo Bay was covered in a previous Depot Friday:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5843380

Santa Fe got there second and had to settle for a hillier routing further inland.  The depot illustrated below opened in 1945, replacing an earlier structure that burned down the previous year:

https://www.cardcow.com/771556/pinole-california-railroad-depot/

An article on page 4 of the January 9, 1945 edition of the Richmond Independent about the construction of the new depot indicates that agent Roy Armstrong had been "getting along in the cramped quarters of a side car office since the fire which nearly destroyed the old station a year ago."  The new depot was built in an unusual style that only appeared on a handful of other 1940's era replacement depots on the Coast Lines (Grants, NM, Rialto and Oceanside, CA).  The agency closed in September 1971, but the depot remained trackside, boarded up, until it was finally demolished in August 1998.

1) The depot was fairly new when Gerry Graham caught eastbound Golden Gate train No.60 making its station stop behind E1 #8.  The vantage point was a wooden road overpass that also survived into the 1990's.

2) By 1970, the San Francisco Chief was the only passenger train on this line.  The late afternoon passage of eastbound No.2 made photography at Pinole challenging, but Henry Brueckman gave it a try in black and white with this result.

3) A ground-level view of the depot in color in 1970.

A view of the west end of the depot shortly before demolition is here: http://atsf.railfan.net/depots/pinole1.jpg

All photos courtesy the Western Railway Museum Archives.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/24 11:26 by Evan_Werkema.

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Very interesting series!

Larry

Neat series showing the changes over time.  I'll add to it by presenting a photograph I took on a cloudy day in 1987, 17 years after the latter two photos above.  I appear to be standing in the identical spot on the bridge as seen in view #2.  A trio of Geeps bring an eastbound out of Richmond.  The ball field with the lights seen in the background in 1970 is still there in 1987, and still there today.  Alas, the depot has been mostly boarded up by 1987, and probably only used by maintenance folks.  Today, this area is hemmed in by development.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/24 15:53 by billmeeker.

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billmeeker Wrote:

> A trio of "bell-ringers" brings a westbound toward
> Richmond. 

Thanks for the addition! Like the speeder down there in the setout track. The train would be an eastbound coming from Richmond, wouldn’t it? The GP35 and GP9 trailing probably fall into the bell-ringer category, but I had been lead to believe that GP39-2’s like 3402 on the point were pretty decent mules. Was that not the case?

The semaphore block signal was upgraded to a searchlight by 1987.

gonx Wrote:

> The semaphore block signal was upgraded to a searchlight by 1987.

It was upgraded to a searchlight in early 1980. The second photo in this old thread shows the eastbound intermediate semaphore at Pinole in January 1980 with the new searchlight grafted on and the wooden overpass from which many of the above views were taken in the background (the depot is mostly hidden by the maintenance of way cars to the right):

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2722814

This was back when searchlights were the boring, ubiquitous, soul-less, cookie-cutter signals railfans loved to hate because they were replacing the classic, fabled, venerable, timeless semaphores.  Once the Santa Fe semaphores were gone, just about every signal on all three railroads in the Bay Area was a searchlight (don't know if SP had any of their triangular colorlights in place in the area by 1980). 

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> billmeeker Wrote:
>
> > A trio of "bell-ringers" brings a westbound
> toward
> > Richmond. 
>
> Thanks for the addition! Like the speeder down
> there in the setout track. The train would be an
> eastbound coming from Richmond, wouldn’t it?
> The GP35 and GP9 trailing probably fall into the
> bell-ringer category, but I had been lead to
> believe that GP39-2’s like 3402 on the point
> were pretty decent mules. Was that not the case?

3400s were good units.

Lots to see in this series!

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
> Thanks for the addition! Like the speeder down
> there in the setout track. The train would be an
> eastbound coming from Richmond, wouldn’t it?
> The GP35 and GP9 trailing probably fall into the
> bell-ringer category, but I had been lead to
> believe that GP39-2’s like 3402 on the point
> were pretty decent mules. Was that not the case? 

Yup,I forgot that the GP35's ("Bell-ringers") were re-numbered from the 3400's to the 2800's by this date.  And correct, the train is eastbound.  Long time since I have been there...  1987 to be exact!

Very interesting info series Evan.  That looks like a really cool station stop.
Brian Stevens