Passenger Trains > Forty Friday: S.F. Muni Dodges the GP40-2's

In a sequemce of three photos taken yesterday within a 15 minute span two San Francisco Municipal Ry. 
T-line trains are seen coming south and going north as they rattle the diamonds of the Union Pacific 
Quint Street Industrial Lead at the intersection of Third Street and Cargo Way.  UP's LSF51 is then
seen moving compass west heading back to the Caltrain main and its home base of South San Francisco.

The 51 job heads onto the lead on Tuesday and Thursday mornings to serve the truck-to-rail transload
for dirty dirt loading as well as serving a rendering plant at Pier 96.  Movements across the diamond
are a bit of a mismatch: in the course of a seven day week UP accounts for four.  Based on 12 trains
an hour for up to 18 hours a day the Muni total comes in somewhere around 1300 to 1400.

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UP moves across the diamonds are protected by an interlocker with a basic two aspect signal.
Typical practice has UP pull up to the signal and after about 60 seconds they'll get a proceed indication
if there are no Muni trains on the approach.  Traffic lights at the Third Street/Cargo Way intersection
remain red all four ways for the duration of UP's move.

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For you maritime fans out there the Ro-Ro/container ships "Cape Sable" and "Cape San Juan" are presently 
moored just 300 yards from the diamonds at Pier 80 on Islais Creek.  They have been there for an
extended period.

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Great shots of a unique operation. I've been wanting to get down there again soon. I've tried twice and both times i've *narrowly* missed the UP local pulling in. Does it still arrive pretty reliably around 9 AM? 

Thanks for the nice photo essay of what happens on Third Street near the famous Quint St. street running that you've expertly covered in the past.

Let's hope the freights keep running even if SF MUNI has transitioned from Breda --> Siemens era.

atx_railfan Wrote:
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> Great shots of a unique operation. I've been
> wanting to get down there again soon. I've tried
> twice and both times i've *narrowly* missed the UP
> local pulling in. Does it still arrive pretty
> reliably around 9 AM? 

Arrives inbound on Quint Street around 10:00.  Monitor 160.815 for frequent
conversations with the Caltrain dispatcher.  They spend about an hour in the
Pier 96 yard before returning.  Photos taken in this neighborhood will not
make it to the UP calendar.

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That's a cool crossing. I'm a Bay Area resident, but I didn't know about it. I'm not sure there are too many like that out here. There was some kind of crossover near downtown San Jose and VTA at some point and there's a stretch of VTA that was built to accommodate reail traffic from near Mountain View to Moffett, but nothing active like your pic. Thanks for posting.

Great coverage. Shame they haven't cleaned that gang graffitti off the engine--it's been there for a bit, I think. Crew might feel it's advisable to not remove it--risk of reprisal. 

phthithu Wrote:
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> Great coverage. Shame they haven't cleaned that
> gang graffitti off the engine--it's been there for
> a bit, I think. Crew might feel it's advisable to
> not remove it--risk of reprisal. 

They don't clean it off equipment in the LA area either. Personally I think it's a management decision to not remove it.

Have any trains gone over the new Illinois Street RR bridge??

The new Illinois Street bascule bridge over Islais Creek opened in 2007 to help relieve
vehicular traffic(especially heavy trucks) from the parallel Third Street bridge.  Rail
was added to provide acess to Pier 80 in the hope of developing container and autorack
traffic.  That never happened.  From the TO archives shortly after opening:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1583630,1583630#msg-1583630

The only documented rail use I'm aware of was in 2012 when a single deck COFC train with
containers loaded with support equipment for the America's Cup races on San Francisco Bay
was staged and unloaded on Pier 80.  All this rail infrastructure remains intact. There
are two tracks right behind the two ships in photo six.

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Before Pier 80 was leased to the auto shipper using it currently the SFBR stored dirt cars out there and I was lucky enough to spot a headsup about an afternoon they were going to moving stuff out there and got some video. Google Earth historical imagery would show cars out there and the flipover to auto shipper use.