Yes, the West Side did kind of feel like a branch line, but it was busy during the summers in the 1960's, especially when the melons were shipping out of the Firebaugh/Mendota area. We had a Tracy Hauler and Fresno Hauler pretty much every day, as I recall, and a Mendota Turn Tracy and return most nights, with a train full of reefers full of cantaloupes. Things that stand out in my memory from the West Side include having our train coming to a complete stop due to dozens of cattle milling around on the track, having broken through an adjacent fence, hitting a loaded sugar beet truck in Newman, CA at about 35 mph with the heavy beets smacking our lead GP-9 pretty hard, and my getting knocked on my face by a swung-open reefer door as we switched cantaloupe loads in Firebaugh. Lucky I wasn't killed.

Another more enjoyable memory is of being in the hole in various sidings between Roseville and Lathrop (where the Tracy and Fresno lines diverged) on a warm summer night on a southbound (geographically) freight waiting for a northbound hotshot fruit block. After the long train of cantaloupe-filled reefers went by it left a nice bouquet of melon in the still air of the Central Valley. Good times, and a long time ago.