Southern Pacific Vol 5: San Francisco Peninsula Route - 1954

This short shows the busy Steam Action on the Southern Pacific Railroad at San Francisco's Third and Townsend Terminal in 1954, in the afternoon for the "commute parade". The feature length program will be released Summer of 2018 by Catenary Video Productions.

[@Thunderbolt_1000_Siren]

This is like paradise for any SP railfan. Those sharp Daylights are definitely why SP is one of my favorite fallen flags and definitely my favorite fallen flag of the west coast.

[@alexthesouthernpacificmt4879]

Same

[@adventuresofamtrakcascades301]

​@@alexthesouthernpacificmt4879 it's my all time favorite falling flag

[@DeathValleyLumberCompany]

Try living in SP territory 🤠 Makes it even more addicting

[@zachb2572]

@@DeathValleyLumberCompany try working on a former SP Branch line, it’s like a drug haha long live the mighty SP 🥳🚂

[@rogerdas]

My grandfather worked in that switch tower and I remember going up the stairs and looking out over the yard and all those passenger trains. If this was in 1954, then I was four years old at the time.

[@warrenhaack]

You are a lucky man! Would that someone in the tower had a 16mm movie camera. That would be everyone's dream to be able to see from that tower what those people saw during the "rush"! Wow.

[@rogerdas]

I'm just impressed that this footage was able to capture this era around the 3rd and Townsend station and the Mission Bay roundhouse. It brings back so many memories. I remember when 6th St. would actually cross over all those tracks and thought that's got to be dangerous.

[@luvsshihtzus]

My father was a conductor and brakeman on this until his death in 1979. He would let me call out the stations when I was young. Wonderful memories!!

[@Mariner311]

Beautiful - Dad commuted from Sunnyvale to Menlo Park on the old SP Commuter in the 60s, and we regularly saw and heard the Libby's Cannery forming up freights. MUCH later, I returned to the area, after the Navy, and used to commute from Santa Clara to San Carlos on the CalTrain... I also took a monthly trip from San Jose to Stockton on ACE.

[@justahillbilly7777]

Just imagine how things would be if Eisenhower's highways had never been built; car culture didn't get AS big as it did; the onslaught of diesel's never got to the point where steamers would be replaced, only where the two radically different technologies could work together in harmony; merger mania never really happened; and rail travel stayed on top where it belongs. Just imagine how radically different things would be.

[@samuelmears7660]

I wish I could time travel back to those times and see the beauty of steam locomotives in action

[@TheYeaters]

I was thinking the same thing to

[@joseezepeda491]

Same here

[@dalecomer5951]

I'm old enough to have seen the last years of steam locomotives in the L.A. area and it was just as impressive to me as a little kid as you could imagine.

[@alexthesouthernpacificmt4879]

If you travel back it would spook you cause it has war

[@雪者]

I'd join you all too if we had time travel.

[@alexthesouthernpacificmt4879]

2:28 the ghost spoke

[@BurtonSKnowles]

Grew up on the peninsula and have spent most of my life here. I missed this era but was fortunate to see SP trains in the 60s and 70s. Great trains, great times. Wish I had been born when these beauties were running up and down those same rails.

[@mediatrainfan0282]

From the 1820s to the late 1950s, considered to be the golden age of American railroading.

[@adventuresofamtrakcascades301]

I wish that the Steam Era had never ended. Ask me why.

[@kremestation80]

I Just Purchased This Thing Two Days Ago At The CRSM It Was Really Great!

[@MikuGaming2367]

It's amazing to see 4444 gets the appearance.

[@chuckabbate5924]

God its like a choreographed musical.....so much better when more were involved in the ops

[@Matscolinger7305]

Its always fun seeing those 0-6-0s running around the yard like that, very nice little engines.

[@robertmedina3846]

I remember steam in the early 1950's. Coast Daylight, Shasta Daylight and Starlight. Plus! When you were able to see ALL OF SAN FRANCISCO!. Can't even see Mission Bay. Technology took care of that.

[@danielulz1640]

This must have been filmed very late in 1954 as I saw a 1955 Plymouth Yellow Cab crossing the tracks.

[@TrainMedia00]

One of my favorite American Railroads ever, and it's almost on 1st place between Santa Fe and Norfolk and Western, but I love this one, I went the to Flatonia TX on the SP Signal box, and I can see the remains of the original Southern Pacific line right next to the line that is now in operation.

[@siriusxakanscaleguy7147]

On the Daylight I saw the engineer waving to the cameraman. They just don't do that anymore. Great video!

[@dalecomer5951]

Actually, they still do in some parts of the country. See this channel: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnnbdnuvqap2e7M

[@EdWhisenantAviation]

Incredible footage, I really enjoyed :)

[@timeforbeans]

AMAZING FOOTAGE!

[@joesniffin8829]

Google, how do I build a time machine?

[@JungleYT]

Wow... I had my parents take me to Third & Townsend Station in the early 70s... By then, there wasn't much going on by then. Pretty boring. I hear they tore it down - 0:21

[@josephf-p9668]

Also you can tell this is the end of the steam era as big 4-8-4s are pulling commuter routes.

[@loboheeler]

Those commute engines could be big, and they scared me as a kid at the crossing stop when they passed by. Interesting that some might have been GS-4 models. I would have thought the commuter line ran a bit longer with steam than 1956.

[@JungleYT]

Really makes me wanna cry, because I was born too late - 1958, when steam was being retired. I do recall one night, around 1963 or 64 hearing a steam whistle late at night as a kid... I will always wonder what kind of loco it was... It must have been one of the last active in L.A. Perhaps a small switcher they were moving on her last journey.

[@alexthesouthernpacificmt4879]

My grandpa was born in 1950

[@dalecomer5951]

They used steam switchers in L.A. until about 1960. It was at the option of the train crew. Some of the younger engineers wanted to learn to operate a steam locomotive while they had the chance. All members of the crew had to agree since it was more work for everyone.

[@JungleYT]

@@dalecomer5951 Interesting... So it really could have been a small switcher. Could have been as early as 1961 or '62. I also recall seeing a huge tender on Alameda street in the Compton area around the same period - NO locomotive, however. I called them "coal cars" as a kid and was thinking, a "coal car"...

[@dalecomer5951]

@@JungleYT Could have been the same one we used to see and hear in the Valley picking up and dropping off cars.

[@JungleYT]

@@dalecomer5951 What year? Could have heard it as early as '61, '62? I was a little kid, so my time window could be off a bit. If it was Southern Pacific, then good chance...

[@carolynmarshall5435]

Love it

[@iceeking2006]

This looks rare and wonderful. Are you going to have the narration on/off feature? I hope so.

[@warrenhaack]

Yes, there will be a feature for this. I am calling it "Full Narration" and "Less Narration". As there are several historical sequences with stills, they would not make sense without narration, so for the less narration feature am leaving in narration for these plus introductions to the other major sequences.

[@julioherrera1363]

Maravilloso video extraordinario

[@wmtrader]

2:38 I wonder what it was like working in that yard tower when a steam locomotive blows smoke right up into the tower's windows, you can see how the upper tower is covered in soot.

[@Keasmcxz]

Love these GS-4 locomotives.

[@blackterminal]

Wow just wow

[@thomasavensjr.2790]

Southern Pacific rr had very attractive looking steam power with their GS class 4-8-4 "Northerns" , Mt class "Mountains" and Pacific type locomotives that operated in passenger service. These three steam engine classes are enjoyable to observe in operation hauling passenger trains in both the "daylight" and the "war baby" (black/ silver) paint schemes.

[@frederickmiles327]

Southern Pacific largely usually steam on its LA- San Francisco coast route thru 1954 with the last steam Daylight on 7th Jan 1955 and on the Inland San Joaquin route ( LA- Telachapi- Bakersfiled - San Francisco )untill well into 1956, the locals around Fisco and to San Jose and probably Sacramento would only have been steam hauled a few months longer, although it appears the last G-4t were not withdrawn until 1958 but would have mainly just have been used for specials and extras over the last couple of years. Steam naturally finished earlier on the longer SP routes , I think 1951 on the Frisco- Portland Shasta.

[@luislaplume8261]

The 1941 movie This Gun for Hire with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake showed The Daylight Limited of SP RR. coming to Los Angeles.

[@Greatdome99]

What's really great about this footage is that the photographer didn't have a zoom lens. Today's photographers zoom in and out so much it makes you dizzy.

[@warrenhaack]

I completely agree. In my teaching I tell students that a zoom lens is to be thought of as a variable FIXED FOCAL LENGTH lens. The first thing I cut out in editing are all the zooms, bobbles, focus shifts. They detract from the story!

[@UnknownIdaho]

Interestingly, though these locos were long gone, these same type of cars were still in use on the peninsula run when I was a kid in the '70's. By then they were in pretty rough shape, rattle, noise and dirty, pretty sad as I recall.

[@fiercetrains4052]

now that's a yard 2:01

[@josephf-p9668]

The SP ran a schedule twice as fast as CalTrain does today on the commuter route. My great grandfather rode the train to work every day.

[@warrenhaack]

It is amazing what we have lost. This is why I continue to make these programs. The Bay Area was once connected with electric railroads and ferry boats. In the 1950s they started tearing them out, and look where we are now - spending billions to try and put a few of them back. There comes a time with freeway gridlock, that saving a few minutes becomes a moot point. In 1912 you could ride the Sacramento Northern from SF to Sacto in 3 hours. I could go on ...

[@josephf-p9668]

@@warrenhaack Yeah really convenient travel taken away in the name of "progress", lots of regrets from people now.

[@JOEMAMA_534]

Love the shot at 0:59! Is there any more shots of GS-1s in this film?

[@westernpacificrr]

Those war baby’s are something huh?

[@harrisonofcolorado8886]

Back when steam locomotives ran America.

[@frederickmiles327]

The last great mainline steam express or varnish in the US were probably the San Joaquin and Daylight , LA-SF like the other great mainline steam express holdout the the Norfok and Western , being a hilly, steep route with a lot of speed restrictions in the terminal big cities it ran too, resulting in the fastest Daylight speed average only 43mph and the same for the NW Norfolk to Cincinatti day and night expresses which also averaged 43mph ,running its two daily Norfolk , Virginia to Cincinnati with links on to Chicago and St Louis on the Pennsvlvania, express trains under J and K streamlined steamers till mid 1958 with some use by the J on Chrsitmas specials late in December that year and in the week after New Year 1959. The Norfold and WEstern in passenger terms was essentiallly a link line for the Pennslvania and Southern, its 200 mile steam connection taking the Penquin and Southerner thru West Virginia being diesel hauled from mid1957. The real passenger prurpose of the NW being to carry the passenger traffic or sailors and officers from the Mid West and West Coast to the great naval port of Norfolk , Virginia. The major defence cuts resulting from the adoption of nuclear deterence as the official Nato polisy by Eisenhower in 1956 resulted in tremendous cuts in US Industry and rail freight, passenger and military traffic.

[@warrenhaack]

Thank you Frederick. I can see you have studied the history of both railroads and thank you for your interesting feedback. Growing up in Modesto I remember the San Joaquin Daylights pounding through the flat valley town.

[@stephenheath8465]

AT&SF was completely dieselize by 55 .Any old time Cali Railfans know the reason why the Espee held on to Steam longer?

[@StevenTorrey]

Would appreciate more background info, Was the the commuter line as well from SF to SJ?

[@loboheeler]

The SF to SJ commuter line was very much used. Same tracks for the commuter as for the Coast Daylight. They would turn around in SJ for the commuter return to SF. There was also a large maintenance yard with turntable in SJ. The Daylight would continue on towards Salinas and might do 75 MPH.

[@ThatOneBayAreaRailfanDude]

1:50

[@danielcarroll3358]

And now, appropriately enough, the entire peninsula route is going under catenary.

[@---sx9qx]

Almost exactly 100 years after SP proposed the same thing. How things circle back.

[@SailorMoonRailfan]

I of course as we’ll as late Baby Boomers, generation X, Y, & Z people including voice actors/actresses, celebrities and my family grew up long after Steam Locomotives were out of service

[@user-ho2gk8od6f]

WO!!! 4450

[@wjeffm]

I haven't seen anything on your website, even under New Releases about this. How far into the summer do you anticipate releasing it? Cool shot of 99 with the Timberline Tavern and two parlor cars.

[@warrenhaack]

Dear Wjeffm I hope to have this out mid July. It is up to several things which all take time. Final Sound Mix, Color Grading of the master, Mastering, Duplication and Manufacturing, to say the least. Right now we are still finalizing picture and sound lock. I can't list it until it is available. Thanks for your interest. Warren

[@wjeffm]

Thanks for replying! Glad it's coming along well.

[@warrenhaack]

To be honest I am going to say it will be early August. I have advertising in Classic Trains to come out also to that effect - but the final elements are taking longer than I had anticipated. Stay tuned, and thank you for your support.

[@superytfan]

Hello

[@warrenhaack]

It is now active, with orders being accepted for shipping on or about Sept 1. Program is out for manufacturing right now.

[@adventuresofamtrakcascades301]

Do you like: GS2s, GS3s, GS4s, GS5s, or GS6s?

[@warrenhaack]

I like 'em all - would that I could see one running!

[@adventuresofamtrakcascades301]

Me too

[@mediatrainfan0282]

Did airplanes become so popular in the late 1950s?

[@johnnyjames7139]

It was jet powered aircraft that doomed the passenger train. Jets go twice the speed of propeller aircraft.

[@crr311sux5]

2:11 fucking awesome

[@pennythatisapenny3160]

At the begining what is happending to sourthern pacific is top light???

[@warrenhaack]

I'm sorry but I don't understand your question, kindly re-phrase it and send again.

[@SPNGLovato18]

Warren Haack I think he’s talking about the Mars Light?

[@kremestation80]

AEM-7 929 Fan Yeah I Think He Means The Mars.

[@pennythatisapenny3160]

@Warren Haack its okay i dont understand to how it did that

[@kremestation80]

Jaiden cyril Rante Do You still want to know how?

[@superytfan]

Is this video or cd who post 1954 grandpa or dad? What tell me?

[@superytfan]

Who

[@superytfan]

Sometimes train going backwards why

[@benwise6517]

Because some times trains need to go backwards, just like cars or trucks or other vehicles do

[@superytfan]

Oh I get thanks

[@benwise6517]

@@superytfan No problem. Hey. Where are you from, bro?

[@Ohiorailfan205productions]

What city is this in?

[@warrenhaack5747]

It starts in San Francisco and includes cities on the peninsula down to San Jose, then over to Santa Cruz.

[@mikehawk2003]

It's all in San Francisco, where the current Caltrain 4th and King Station is at. This scene is unrecognizable today.

[@Ohiorailfan205productions]

Ok

[@reetaumroy815]

Mt 4