I was surprised to read here that the Sixth St. Bridge is going to be demolished. Living now in the Pacific NW I don't get a lot of LA news so hadn't heard about it. A related post mentioned Wingfoot, also.

My memories of LA mostly reflect the year and a half, right out of high school, that I worked for the Santa Fe as a dual-senority swithcman-brakeman. Having little senority I never did get assignments as a road brakeman but instead got some in-town "road" experience by working the Wingfoot job as often as I could. Santa Fe kept an engine at the Wingfoot freight depot on the stub house track, usually on of the high-hood Alcos. The midnight crew did the bulk of the Harbor District main line switching (between Redondo Tower and Van Ness, just prior to Inglewood), running both the engine and the crew as fast as possible so as to get an "early quit" pretty much every night. Rarely did that crew work more than five hours of the eight hour shift, but by skipping beans and going non-stop they got a lot of work done. It seemed as if the bell and air horn were sounding constantly due to the numerous grade crossings along Slauson.

As I recall the Goodyear Industrial District south of Slauson Ave. was mostly handled by an afternoon shift and I believe an engine that went on duty at First Street yard did a lot of the work in and around Malabar Yard.

As to Sixth Street, there was a switchtender shanty almost right under the bridge, where the Third District double-track main had crossovers into and out of the south end of the First Street yard. The lone switchtender was busy, with the bullring engines constantly moving in the yard and various switch jobs and mainline freights coming and going, and the numerous passenger trains flying by.

Now the old bridge, a much larger one than the others along the LA River near downtown, is, along with much of the railroad infrastructure, activity and business, going away also.