Kicking Cars in the Desert: SP Desert Yard, Oakland CA 1990 Jan.14 & 20

[@sd90mac61]

Te good ol early 1980s, What extraordinary footage 💯👍 sure miss seeing them gigantic 87' SP BOXCARS, their scarce now a days, and them cabooses, love seeing them cars coupling on IMPACT, EXCELLENT VIDEO THANKS FOR SHARING THIS WITH ME,👍😉 HOPE I CAN FIND MORE VIDEO LIKE THIS.

[@jreichel1]

Thanks, I rally appreciate your comment. This particular video is one of my personal treasures for those same reasons. I just wish I had shot a lot more!

[@outlookave6653]

Great video Please keep them coming Miss the old SP switcher engines Thanks so much love the 80’s and 90’s

[@jreichel1]

Thanks! I'm actually planning to upscale the footage to HD and re-issue this! So please stay tuned. Have you subscribed? and clicked the little bell icon?

[@sharon94503]

My late father worked for SPRR and was a switch master in Oakland for several years. Happy this came up in my feed in 2025!

[@GreatNorthwesternRwy]

Classic footage. Love the sound of the 12 cyl 645E. Good stuff!

[@jreichel1]

KZbin says this is HD. Let me explain. The footage is not HD, but I wanted it to be widescreen, so I selectively zoomed in and then saved in an HD format. Some parts had terrible sound (static) and I denoised them into this weird underwater sound; I guarantee it sounds better this way. Cloudy day, shooting on the wrong side of the light, no tripod -- I used some computer tricks to try to improve it a little.

[@BrianXMoore]

Excellent! Many thanks.

[@WMAC_Master]

the ol 16th street station

[@daveyboy_]

Boxcars seem to be going the way of the cabosse

[@featherriverrailfan1758]

This is so cool!

[@scottkew6278]

NIIIIIIICE !!! U GOT MORE ???

[@jreichel1]

Thank you! I'm upscaling my old footage and will be issuing new versions at some point. I wish I'd shot a lot more than I did!

[@SPARKLEDAZEY]

12:44 is this footage from the north side of Desert yard? Was the flyover bridge once a wye?

[@jreichel1]

Yes, you got it, north side of Desert Yard. There were two flyovers so electric trains could cross over the SP tracks to get to the Bay Bridge. In later years, the track was removed from one of them; I remember walking on it in 1976. I don't know what year it was torn down. The Oakland Terminal used the other flyover for their freight trains.

[@SPARKLEDAZEY]

@@jreichel1 so interesting! I frequent Desert yard very often and love to hang out on the flyover bridge. It's still there, however they removed the west end of it to make the new freeway overpasses and I'm sure because they stopped using 16th St station. Thanks for the knowledge.

[@Contrajoe]

From an 11/2016 aerial image, it looks like there's a new yard just west of where this one used to be. Did cedar street get replaced by frontage road? If the desert yard of the 1990s was SP, who owned the once much larger yard near what's now the intermodal port? Also, who owned the yard just south of the Oakland Navy base? (Not the one in among the warehouses, but the old ferry mole yard?)

[@jreichel1]

Yes, after the 1989 earthquake, the 880 freeway changed its alignment, and there were new frontage roads and onramps/exits. That other yard was SP too.