Not really railroad related but IBM at their south San Jose campus was next to my Kaiser Santa Teresa medical center. IBM employed at one time over 10,000 employees on that campus and they manufactured disc drives IIRC. They had their own medical staff and maintained they could set up a 50 bed hospital and they had their own fire department. One infamous Sunday there was an explosion----fortunately only one employee was injured and brought to our hospital but there was a media "event" around it. IBM would not allow the San Jose Fire department onto their property, saying they had their own which was in control, and the next day, three suits showed up at my hospital to pick up the clothing from the admitted employee so no one could examine them to find out what was involved in the explosion etc. They marched to their own code-----we called them "the Vatican" though I admit that in 1987 or so I got them to participate in a mock disaster drill with us. In the last few years the IBM campus has been sold and is now being developed into a major mega apartment complex shopping center etc ----I don't know where they are going to get the people to fill all these apartments up-------anyway, as they bulldozed the campus they pulverized and ground up all the buildings and as I looked at the piles of "sand" all I could think of was what kind of toxic materials were in there----------we always said years ago that working next to IBM we might someday wake up glowing green in the dark!! :-) Some of you might also remember that Fairchild located just a mile or so south of IBM had to pump out water for years because they supposedly had poisoned the "plume" of water in the area. Well, guess what--------so had IBM, but because they were beloved by the political powers that be in San Jose, no one ever touched them.. Ah yes, politics as usual.
C.