While we’re on the subject of other railroads for everybody, here’s one for discussion of the Southern Pacific. Have at it!
I was going to start this topic too but ya beat me to it. It’s hard to believe it has been 10 years sience the merger. 10 years, 20 years, 50 years and I will still call the former SP routes Southern Pacific. Railroading has gotten steril sience the departure of the SP. The variety of equiptment and operations was unsurpassed by any other railroad. From lumber locals in backwoods Oregon to Autoracks and doublestacks (an SP innovation) on the Memphis Blue Streak, from commutes on the penninsula to unit oil trains over Tehachapi, from beat trains to iron ore trains, from cab forwards over Donner to the narrow guage in Owens valley it seemed SP had it all. Well mabee except for coal, but merging with (actually being bought by) the DRGW cured that. And what railroad had more impact on such a huge area then the SP. Mabee I’m a bit biased because I’ve always lived by a SP line. Or mabee I’m a bit biased because I have many relatives that were lifelong employees of the friendly. I don’t know. All I know is I miss the SP !!!
I gotta agree with what Chad was saying about the Southern Pacific. The Oil Cans getting their start on September 11, 1983 and hauling almost 1.9 million gallons of crewd per train. The stack trains, even the old Golden Pig service trailors that SP owned and carried on their TOFC cars.
I enjoyed listening to the dispatchers giving out the blocks (DTC-Direct Traffic Control) to the trains and getting them back. Going back even further than the DTC was the decentralized operations with the help of the station operators along the system.
Just everthing about the SP I miss.
Grew up on SP, they rolled right by the grandparents house in South LA, as a kid would run to the end of the street three houses down to watch the trains roll by whe we were visiting. Only had a little used UP branch by the 1st house I remember, nothing really by the house we moved to in Cerritos but another little used SP branch so my main early trainwatching memeories are from the South LA SP line.
Thats a good reminder that vsmith has given me. Having grown up by the El Segundo Branch I could see the local roll by.
Now living near the coastline, I can say that I’ve lived near the Southern Pacific all my life.
There is an unpatched speed-lettered SP GP40M-2 running around the Phoenix line still - it’s the 7137 and runs the locals out here. Everytime I see it, it takes me back 14 years to when the Speed Lettering debuted on the Espee - I always did like that look. Too bad it wasn’t able to last. Anschutz did stave off the impending exit for SP by several years, he did some good things I think. Too bad there was too much to be done. The Espee might still be around today.
Chad - I will always and forever refer to it as Southern Pacific out here too. “Union Pacific” just doesn’t sound right, even after a decade.
when UP bought out CNW, i was depressed, but i became anti UP not thenm but until i learned that they also devoured SP. it was then that i decided that UP was more of an Empire than a railroad. taking control of all track and trying to get as close to a monopoly as they can. i loved the way that grey body with the red nose and white SP on the front looked. it was so cool. so great. but i’m glad that so many are not yet patched. are there sill full SP paint GP60s out there?
Yes, #9721. Interesting, since I kitbashed an HO scale model of this exact unit back in '92.
Well i have seen SP engines in rochester NY,but the numbers are patched and the railroad name is unpatched.
When Anshutz bought the SP I was stoked. I lived in Alturas on the Modoc line at the time and the line had been shut down by the SP a year or so before and when Anshutz came along they re opened the line. They also talked big about running coal trains through there to a yet to be built port in Coos Bay. Well traffic picked up but the coal trains never came to be (although they did run a test train). By the 90s I had moved to Van Nuys right next to the Coast line and the SP was showing signs of trouble. Anshutz was selling the family jewels to keep the railroad running. I think he was overwelmed by the SP, a much bigger and more complex railroad then his DRGW. The loco fleet was old and in need of maintainance and they were severely power short. Track maintainance was being defered and the railroad was slowly melting down. Finaly Anshutz brought in some real talent and hired Ed Moyers out of retirement to straighten things up. I think Mr. Moyers did an outstanding job in that capacity. Most people think of Moyers as the bad guy that single tracked Donner. Well there was a lot more to it then that. The Overland route traffic was a shadow of its former self and the Sunset was in need of more capacity, especially with all those stack trains coming out of the ICTF in Delores. The track&nb
Don’t forget the tunnel motors.
I did a thread where I listed information fromm the 1990 SP roster that I have and another titled "The Friendly’ where I told of some of my memories of SP employees living up the SP’s nickname. Unfortunately, I did not bookmark these. Hopefully they will fix the search engine on here so it goes back further than a month. If not, I may eventually look for these and post the links here.
Sili,
Where about in Phoenix do you see it? My son and I watch the UP lines out here in Mesa quite a bit. Off the Mcqueen siding, we see different power every now and then. Most of it though, if it is old SP blood, has been patched out, or worse, the blank gray look on the hood.
I most recently saw it about three weeks ago, on a local out of Phoenix (vs. those based at McQueen). I was at the Dobson Rd. crossing and the train was heading east to Mesa. I don’t know if it continued on to McQueen or further east to Higley/Germann etc., but it was MUd with a GP60 (1919, patched SP).
Another question - when did they start running an office off of McQueen? Back about 12 years ago, when I had friends on the SP who gave me cabrides, we’d often switch out the newspaper plant there on the east end of McQueen, sometimes Empire on the way back, and often they’d take their break and go eat at that restaurant there in that office complex west of the Chandler branch on Baseline (I think it was called Charley’s Grill). That was in the days of the Magma Turn and the train was based out of Phoenix Yard.
Getting back to the 7137, it still has its Nathan P124 horn. The '60 had a K3LA, however.
On the western end of the Phoenix line, locals tend to run mostly six-axle power, mostly UP, but you will see the occasional SD40-2R unit that still is speed lettered and unpatched. Mostly SD60Ms, sometimes SD70Ms (flag paint, flared radiator) and these are the locals.
Since the search engine on the new forum is useless, it took a few hours, but I found one of the threads I was looking for.
Southern Pacific is my favorite railroad, if you have not seen my signiture yet.
I love the cab forwards, northerns and consolidations the best. Of course, one of my favorite northerns…4449!
Thanks for the link Eric. You had to like the accessability of the SP.
All I can say is that the Pass and the Loop aren’t the same without Southern Pacific. Union Pacific on the Palmdale Cutoff is just like a fish out of water, and double goes for the Loop. It’s just wrong.
I think that we all should put our heads and wallets together and start up a new Southern Pacific and buy back their lines little by little. Who’s with me?
I’m Down with that !!!
And the first order of bussiness should be to buy back all the tunnel motors and paint them back to bloody nose colors. The second order of bussiness should be to get rid of TWC and bring back the DTC blocks.
We’ll run the baywindow cabooses too!