One of my favorite videos!

The pre- San Joaquin Valley Railroad era, those were real railroaders.

Wilis Kyle tried hard to save a lot of the operations south of Exeter on the SP, ATSF and Visalia Electric. I don't know if most of the Santa Fe was rescueable, but redundant. RailGenerica trashed what Kyle Railways (especially under GM Fred Krebs) and RailTex did by their bean counters and lawyers by deferring track and surcharging shippers south of Exeter on the SP. GW or the "orange borg" is better... The only thing is that now railroaders are kept tight. No getting on/off equipment, PPE, no hand signals, no flying switches, the list goes on...

The dispatcher took the job of the operator and sales and marketing was delegated to offices in the Midwest I believe. The old friendly Station Agent operator was gone.

Most of this is gone, including this branch. It was a tragedy when they centralized most of the stuff and lost it for trucking... Also gone is the proud Santa Fe that kept this branch to 40MPH standards. That is class.

Joe Cullum
Exete, CA