My Dad JB Perry at 14:02 seconds. I remember him taking my older brother and I to the Calwa yard and taking us on the Roundhouse. What an experience. Great video and thank you for posting.
We got to Rail when railroading was fun. I retired as an engineer on the Valley Division. I’m good friends with Bob Towns featured in this production. I worked this branch one summer in 1980 as a new engineer.
When I first started working on the CNW in 1974 at Proviso Yards, when you walked into the Proviso Administration Bldg. you would see a small army of clerks at their work stations in front of many "pigeon holes" that the clerks used to put the waybills in to organize them. With the advent of the computer all of those clerks went "bye-bye"! So did the waybill! Man, I saw a lot of changed on the RR in my 39 years working as a brakeman/switchman for 5 months then as an engineer! I retired in 2013 upon my 60th birthday with 39 1/2 years of service. Wish I was still there sometimes.....
congrats on your retirement... i was also a CNW employee started in 93 out of butler yard... by the time i hired on, i had missed out on a lot of the "good times" the old heads talked about... i still had fun though, learned how to be a good switchman and be a good helper from a nice bunch of guys
I’m now retired started with conrail in 1990 as a brakeman when the crew was three man and boy I really miss those times getting on and of moving equipment flying drop switching man it was fun till csx came along today in buffalo ny it’s sad and just down disgusting on what they’ve done to railroading today it’s not fun anymore they’ve just killed the spirit of the job and the worker. I’m now a retired engineer and to tell you I cry sometimes the memories of the men I’ve met and worked with over the years was a great experiance
In the late 1970s the way things were done by the Switchmen and Brakemen, were pretty standard across the Santa Fe. I worked out of Kansas City, and the scenery is all that is different. That similarity in signals and operations on trains and in yards, is comforting for some reason. Three times in the 1990s I transferred to the Western Region/Division from Kansas City to work in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Barstow as a temporary transfer. I loved it.
Really great video. I hired out as a switchman/brakeman in Fort Madison Iowa in 1966 on the Santa Fe and went on to work as a conductor. Retired after 43 years. No pakset radios, getting on/off moving equipment, dropping cars, this is as real as it gets.I took a temprorary transfer to the Richmond Yards for 3 months in '90 and then went back to work the Valley Div out of Fresno in '94 for 3 months on another temp, worked with a lot of good people out there. Thanks for the memories
So much in this video you can't see anymore. Geeps on the road, 40 MPH on a branch line, cabooses, Santa Fe pin stripe livery, mounting and dismounting moving equipment, a crazy dangerous switching move, and crews without high viz jackets. Thanks for sharing!
TrainTrackTrav Dont forget cameras on board and an actual enjoyment of railroading. Now it seems everyone I talk to who works on the rails dislikes their jobs and are only in it for the pay.
BACK then, they Worked for the Railroad, and the RR worked for them.... Now, between overregulation, EnviroNazis, Bureaucracy and the almighty Union - the Hustlers, Hostlers and Jostlers basically work for the UNION!!! Management is now considered a "Monster" that you DON'T talk to without a Lawyer, or the Union TELLS YOU what you want! 😞 It really was, the good old days....
We spent 1994-5-6 photoing ATSF in Illinois. About a week or so each year. About all the leave time available. All those new red/silver locos was an amazing sight.
Remember that, by this time, film cameras were already 100-year-old technology. This kind of quality is completely normal for a professional production of the era.
I worked this as head brakeman from time to time during my career with Santa Fe mid to late 70s. Crew running what we called elbows and a**holes. Really enjoyable working the branch and time would fly by. Thanks for the memories.
That’s when railroading was cool! Now all you see here in the West is mostly stack trains! Great video! Brings back memoir railfanning back in the day! Wonder if there is a part 3!
I was a Santa fe engineer for 58 years. One time I hooked up to a caboose and started pulling. Dumb ass on the other end never did figure out what was going on. Had to take a bus home.
That's because grafitti had yet to leave New York and other urban cities. Once New York cracked down on graffiti, the artists took it on the road so to speak. Though they weren't pioneers of rail vandalism, that goes to the guys that tagged cars in chalk with little pictures or their signature. While not as garish and in your face as modern graffiti it is still vandalism nonetheless but those little tags seem to be well loved by your average railfan. Vandalism is vandalism is vandalism. The good news is that by the time graffiti really took hold most railroads had already transitioned away from the eye catching liveries and slogans of the golden age to the drab, corporate paper pusher arousing, cheap and soulless schemes we see today. In 2023 most of the good stuff is gone, particularly boxcars and tank cars. Seeing the boring PSR blocked of cars of the modern manifest tagged to hell doesn't move me. Now seeing what they do to locomotives in So Cal is shocking and gives off a real third world vibe.....but it is the LA area, so yeah.
This is bloody brilliant! Is there anymore? Is it from a dvd series? I want to buy it and eat up this REAL railroading, with people who knew what they were doing... not the current PSR bs
Wow! I didn’t see this was on your channel before I started working on my program Steve! This was very interesting to watch especially seeing how depot clerk operations were! I feel like this, my two parter, and then a DVD on the BNSF Bakersfield Sub are the only programs I know of that cover the ATSF north or Bakersfield in any sort of detail!
I worked for the great Santa Fe during this time Hunter. I was given the video by Bob Towns the engineer spotlighted in the video. We are still good friends. If you have seen my cab ride video, Bob was at the controls of the 199 that we met at Christie.
@ 33:47... non railroaders don't know that what the brakeman is doing is required by the rule book (checking your train in the curve)... sometimes goofy trainmasters and/or traveling enrs will literally "hide in the weeds" and give a STOP signal with a fusee ... if that happens you BETTER stop your train or the crew gets written up for failing an efficiency test... dirty rotten scoundrel officers
25mfd . Back in the good ol days, jobs were advertised as 12 hours and paid accordingly. The faster you got it done, the quicker you got home. Nothing close to the PSR of today’s railroading.
oh man don't get me going on PSR... hunter Harrison started that crap at CN, and it trickled over to practically every other class 1 (supposedly PSR turned CN from a $2billion outfit to a $24billion outfit...so obviously every other class 1 CEO saw that and started drooling... and PLOTTING)... the ultimate goal of PSR is to show the investors that every car is MOVING... so to that end they have closed a lot of yards, where a lot of those same cars would be set out and then SIT not moving, the UP (my old employer... I was a switchman for the CNW/UP) calls this DWELL TIME and they hated it UP has closed SEVERAL yard across its system including the proviso(chicago) hump... all those cars that would be sitting in a yard are kept moving, making the trains of today even BIGGER, HEAVIER, LONGER... overall not a bad idea... just too bad the employees are pretty much cannon fodder behind this grand PSR plan
as far as the 12hr jobs go... on our end of the railroad our 12hr jobs moved at a overtimes pace if you get my drift... they were in no hurry not even a little bit... our 12hr jobs had a lot of work and no one was interested in rushing through it, partly because our mgmt. would throw the rule book at you if you messed something up while rushing the job... and mgmt did just that... so guys were like hey I ain't running and get canned... but I like your vid... always interested in seeing the little things that make this job different and the same
A lot of guys stayed on. My best friend just retired a few years ago with over 45 years seniority. Another friend that I trained in 92 is #1 in seniority and retires next year
