Railroaders' Nostalgia > SP Swing Brakeman out of Bayshore yard.

Now this was an interesting job as it started out in a First Class manner. The idea of this job was to pass signals at Logan Quarry. I think Logan was mid-way between San Jose and Watsonville Jct.
You started out DHing; if you wanted you could ride the Lark.  How wonderful was that! At San Jose you met the conductor of the Logan Job and were placed into the Crummy still in DH status.
At Logan everything changed for the worse as you were kicked out of the caboose and instructed to go "High" In the dead of night. Pitch Black. On moving cars! It was cold account sea breezes
hitting you and you felt it to the bone. No radios except for head end and rear end. You got the job done. Then you proceeded to Watsonville where the SP put you up in a rather horrible place with gang showers.
On the trip called back to bayshore you often headed in somewhere for an eastbound. This gave you the opportunity to steal garlic and lettuce from the adjacent fields! At san Jose you signaled the conductor
with a "Bust UP" sign. Most west bounds out of the Jct didn't go past San Jose. You hardly ever worked west. So you DH home sometime on a commuter.
4460

It’s been a while now, but I think Logan is 7-8 miles timetable west of Watsonville Jct. where the crew went on duty. The Lark stopped there, so it would have made for a pleasant DH.
Westbound through freights did go past San Jose, but most went to Oakland. An Oakland based crew would take the train over and the inbound crew would officially DH to San Francisco. In realty, most of the crew lived in San Jose, so they would just go home.

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I caught this job off the brakeman's XBRD in '74 and it was something of a butt buster.  It was called the San Carlos Turn and was a high mileage, high seniority job, therefore an "Early Quit."  It was popularly known as the Rolling Stones, because the Logan Quarry supplied rock and gravel to concrete batching plants in the South Bay Area.  Cut the caboose off on the main, open the derails, line up the inside switches, buckle up the air, knock off the handbrakes and start doubling over inside the plant, passing hand signs to the caboose for radioing to the head end.  The air brake test was considered sort of pro forma. If there was air in the caboose, that was 'all good.'  It featured a compilation of Jeeps from the Salinas day jobs so the uphill pull to Morgan Hill was long and slow, allowing plenty of time to charge the brake pipe.
The downhill run to Coyote was much more exiting, especially if there was a hard yellow on the approach signal.  That would prompt the hoghead (Junior) to pick up the radio and and holler at the SJ Dispatcher.  "Open the gates, Smitty." If the response came back "Outbound Eastbound," that was when we made the real air brake test.

Michael Sarratt
Rainier, WA

I forgot to mention that the job ran out of Wats Jct. by then, so it was an all WJ crew.

Michael Sarratt
Rainier, WA

One of my favorite jobs to work as an engineer. I didn’t have the seniority to hold it, but I was able to take it on a temporary hold down (clause) when the regular engineer, “Junior” O’Lague, was on vacation.

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OD WJct about 6p. Hit San Jose about 9-10 and back to the Junction early AM

ApproachCircuit Wrote:
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> Then you proceeded to Watsonville where the
> SP put you up in a rather horrible place with gang
> showers.
> 
I spent many nights at the "dorm" in Watsonville Junction.  Not very fancy but as crew accomodations went in those days it was not too bad.  The Park Hotel in SLO was a lot worse. One Christmas Eve the crew dispatcher talked me into working, and I ended up at the dorm.  I still remember the scrawny Christmas tree in the lobby, it seemed like the saddest place in the world.  But I got a DH home on the Mail so all was not bad.  It would be interesting to compile a list of the worst away from home accomodations in the old days.  Quite a contrast to the motel accomodations typically provided today.

JBWX

jbwest Wrote:
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  It would be interesting to compile a list
> of the worst away from home accomodations in the
> old days.  Quite a contrast to the motel
> accomodations typically provided today.
>
> JBWX
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,790914,page=1

Another sign of old age, but in my defense that was a long time ago and I had forgotten about it.  Thanks for remembering.

JBWX

4451Puff Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> jbwest Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>   It would be interesting to compile a list
> > of the worst away from home accomodations in
> the
> > old days.  Quite a contrast to the motel
> > accomodations typically provided today.
> >
> > JBWX
> https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11
> ,790914,page=1