My mother and I regularly rode from San Jose to SF for our shopping trips. It was my very first trainride at about age 3 and I lost my teddy bear and the conductor found it-------

Bowhay: The missing sounds of the Del Monte Express
Phil Bowhay Flashback
Article Last Updated: 02/17/2008 01:37:00 AM PST


With all our wonderful things on the Peninsula, the one thing missing is the sound of trains — especially, train whistles. As recently as 1971 you could still hear the Del Monte Express moaning in and out of town, and if you can't remember that, rent the movie "Picnic." Not our whistle, but close enough.
While we lived for a time in the East Bay, nighttime train sounds, in between a few gunshots, lulled us to sleep, or maybe even woke us up, all part of our world. Here in God's Country, we were blessed with a mix of train whistles, fog horns and bell buoys, and we slept the sleep of the innocents.

In Pacific Grove, the Del Monte was the railroad crown jewel, spending the night by Lovers Point. The track extended by our classic depot, out through the woods, past Asilomar to the sand plant where Spanish Bay now sprawls. That toot toot toot as the engine pulled hopper cars though the woods just seemed the right touch. Didn't seem to bother the butterflies, either. My train historians, Jim and Rita deLorimier, tell me that some kids really did hitch rides through the pines.

The depot looked just like that model you might have made for your Lionel layout, painted that good old railroad tan. The turntable was just beyond the depot and about 50 yards away, where we looked for golf balls, a very authentic, state of the art outhouse. The lumber yard was on the other side of the depot with its own siding. One of the reasons I'm strong today, 60 years later, is that I


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spent a couple of weeks unloading wet redwood from a flat car. If you really care, the good old Internet holds a lot of history, pictures and otherwise.
Wasn't it the Del Monte that collided with Doc Ricketts?

The Del Monte, in our heyday, pulled five or six passenger cars, with Oliver's Lounge car, the back porch at the end. Oliver, who might have been a Pullman porter in earlier days, resplendent in a white, starched jacket, served cocktails to contented passengers, home from a day marching around Union Square. Of course, the bar closed before the Pacific Grove city line!

The train left P.G. at 7 a.m. sharp, with brief stops in Monterey, Del Monte, Fort Ord and on to Castroville and points north, arriving at 3rd and Townsend in San Francisco at 10 a.m. Plenty of time for lunch at The Palace, St. Francis (Meet you under The Clock), The Fly Trap or Bernstein's Fish Grotto, spend a few bucks at The White House, back on the train at 4 p.m. and home in P.G. by 7.

Well, aside from the Del Monte, there was a lot a railroad here. Sidings up and down the line, big business on Cannery Row with tin shipped in for sardine cans, and cans of fish and fish byproducts shipped out.

Cement and lumber came and went, and Fort Ord was HUGE, with tracks all over the place The Y at Castroville carried trains south, picking up produce for the rest of the world in Salinas. DeLorimier's Monterey Bay Packing in Castroville shipped in all directions, taking advantage of both legs of the Y.

The Greyhound was our bridge to the main line in Salinas, where we hopped aboard the Daylight, or the Starlight, or the Owl. And speaking of the Greyhound, remember when the end of the line — or the beginning of the line — was right there in downtown P.G. at 17th and Lighthouse? Made it pretty easy to get out of town, not that anybody really wanted to.

Around 1950 brother Brooks and I boarded the Daylight in Salinas, changed to the Chief in Los Angeles, both trains loaded with college kids, headed back to school. A wonderful night on the Chief — you fill in the blanks — then off in Albuquerque for another year of serious study at the University of New Mexico.

If you're retired and your schedule is loose, take the Amtrak north. Portland, Seattle, even Sacramento. The food is great, the scenery almost like it used to be , and there's a nice club car. I don't think there's a security check and you don't have to take off your shoes. You can even walk around. Takes a little longer than Southwest, but what's the rush?

Every year we hear about a new committee, or study group, promising a new, if shorter, Del Monte. Don't count on it, friends. But Salinas really isn't that far away, and I think they're going to paint the station.


Phil Bowhay is a Carmel writer whose column appears now and then in Opinion.