Nostalgia & History > UP Meade Local in '88

Sometime in '88 [didn't note] UP's southbound Meade Local [aka the "tuna fish"] was approaching the SP crossing near Meade transfer in the port of Long Beach, CA, at Manual siding on UP's San Pedro branch. This same spot today is inacessable as it is a valley in the midst of stacks of thousands of stored containers and is a location controlled by the PHL railroad called CP Farragut.
JB

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Nice to see clean power...can anyone please tell me where the GE came from? Thanks.
Tom

More than likely the GE came from Erie, PA. Andy

UP 179 should be ex-MP 4679 (B23-7)

Nathan Beauheim

3rdswitch Wrote:
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> Sometime in '88 UP's southbound Meade Local was
> approaching the SP crossing near Meade transfer in
> the port of Long Beach, CA, at Manual siding on
> UP's San Pedro branch. This same spot today is
> inacessable as it is a valley in the midst of
> stacks of thousands of stored containers and is a
> location controlled by the PHL railroad called CP
> Farragut.
> JB
>


Nice pic as always 3rdswitch, but a little correction. The "Tuna" local originated in L.A. on duty at either 0600 or 0630 (memory is starting to fade), went down to Terminal Island returning with among other things the loads out of Starkist (hence "Tuna" local). And the Mead local went on duty at Long Beach (Mead yard) bringing Toyota autos to L.A., picking up Toyota truck beds at Rioco (Paramount), setting out Toyotas to the Santa Fe transfer track at Hobart with the autos going out on the LANPZ that night and the LADEZ at 0400 the next morning. After setting out in L.A. they would return to Mead with dead freight.
Took a train (if you could call it that) down the "Branch" on saturday (one wing car for Boeing). We used to take them all the way down the Lakewood branch to Boeing (was Douglas aircraft), but we now spot them at Bragg crane at Rioco (same place that made the Toyota truck beds) and they then truck them to the Boeing plant next to the Long Beach airport.
Keep the pictures comming.-BMT

Doesn't the UP lakewood branch still service the airport or have access to the plant any more ??

missedcall Wrote:
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> Doesn't the UP lakewood branch still service the
> airport or have access to the plant any more ??

No, the Lakewood branch has been out of service for some time now (maybe a year or two). The switch and track are still there at Douglas jct. where the branch starts but is out of service. The aircraft parts are transloaded onto lowboy trailers at the Bragg crane lot at Rioco and trucked down to Boeing in Long Beach. I'm not sure if the track is still intact all the way down to the Douglas wye at the airport or not as I haven't been down there in years.-BMT

Boy talk about memories from visiting the Starkist plant as a kid and watching them process the tuna, package and load on to boxcars and the other lo-cal, such as the Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach and watching them roll out a new aircraft. Times of the past.