Alameda Street was great, many jobs out of J yard for many years on the lower street, several jobs out of the Links in the afternoon and evening, such as the famous Rat Hole and City jobs. You couldn't switch the street north of Olympic after 7 am or before 5 pm due to an agreement with City of LA. You haven't lived until you've had pork noodles at the now gone Atomic café in Little Tokyo, at 3 am, complete with cops, punks, prostitutes, and switchmen in overalls.

Alameda Street had everything back then...beer, cigarettes, tin cans, produce, Christmas trees at 8th Street team, paper for the Times, cars for the flower mill, stoves out of Gaffers and Satler, steel, scrap, and just a whole lot of lose car work....dipping in and out of blind alley's, making drops, dutch drops, and kicking cars, all while operating on a live street, complete with idiots and drunks..... So the fuse story is not the only one, but it is still one of the best.

Like Mike Jarel, there were a group of us that worked these jobs whenever they were open.... I spent a summer on the night City job, a get it done and go home, quit job. It also had the perk of switching Coors, and that summer I had a refrigerator full of free talls we got for letting the manager know when exactly we would be arriving with the cars, so he could call his swampers to unload the cars, so I was real popular. It's all gone now.....

Ironically, several years ago I worked as a contractor on a report on the status of rail operations on the section of Alameda from Washington north to 4th street, to determine possible reuse, and to identify tracks for removal and repaving, and shot tons of photos of abandoned spurs for removal. I understand from the prime that we won some kind of award for the report, and it scored a grant to remove the tracks and fix the street.