Railroaders' Nostalgia > Pull down the pass - we'll go to beans

In my previous post, I had a photo of the crew's locker room at our old, ex-SP depot in Albany, Oregon.  I really liked this old depot even though it was a bit small.  What was nice was being right on the mainline; when things were slow and the weather nice, we could sit out on the depot platform and watch the world go by.  Back then I worked a relief job which the last night of the week's schedule was on the night yard switcher.  Ex-SP SD7 1501 was my favorite power although we often had a variety of power, from end-cab SW9s to the 1501 to one of our GP39-2s. 1501 was the best of the bunch, queen of the fleet as far as I was concerned.

I don't remember this night twenty-four years ago (May 8, 2001) but I bet we had a lull in the work and sat at the depot for a few minutes while waiting for more paper work.  The depot housed managment, dispatchers, customer service plus Amtrak had a small office on the south end of the building.  Very convenient except once in a while some befuddled Amtrak customer would wander into our office wanting to know where their train was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/25 21:55 by roustabout.

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Nice look back, Lou.

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

I miss the good times of working out of that depot...
Stopped on the main with the Eugene Hauler to say 'Hi' to BLE and pick up Tony D. and Danny. --April 14, 1995

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Great, Lou, thanks.

Nice memory there Lou. I had an incident at Albany many years ago, while working Amtk 11, the SB Starlight. 
All was well; we were on time, under good weather proceeding South. At the ALY stop, I encountered a psgr
who was standing next to a sea of white canisters, large and very heavy. About 9 of them, Turned out they were 
full of Oregon raw honey. Each one weighed about 70 lbs or more. Big ones, We had a cowardly (yep- I said it)
Conductor that day on the Starlight. He instructed me to hand load every single container into the 1112 car.
 
It was an Ex ATSF Budd Hi Level coach, which does have a lot of bag storage space on the lower level. I loaded 
all 9 of them; which then completely filled my lower level Racks. I'll never forget that bad call by this Condr. The Psgr
should have shipped them separately, IMO. Never should have been allowed as "hand carry" luggage. True story.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/25 10:20 by OldPorter.