That whole area from Salinas to San Ardo was a prime area for hitting vehicles. It was mostly farm equipment but sometimes private vehicles.

I was pulling Bill Howell on his last RT trip out of SLO on the SF. We followed the plug out of Margarita and followed his block to Bradley. From there he left us until he got to King City. I left Welby on a yellow and got a red out in the country. It was the plug, ahead of us. A road grader turned right, off the old highway at the Maggiao carrot crossing and they t-boned him. We stopped behind the last coach at waited. The coroner finally showed up and they could move the train. There was equipment damage to the lead unit and a few cars so they pulled up between switches on the main in front of the depot. They had to wait for a roundhouse foreman from Wat.Jct.

Well, no point of sitting on our butts for a few more hours on Bill's last trip so I called the operator and had him ask the dispatcher if we could run around Atk and go on to Watsonville. After a minute or two, the operator said he had some orders for us and to line ourselves through the house track. We did at 5 mph, (that track was really in bad shape) picked up our orders and kept going back onto the main line. Our order was a run ahead of the plug King City to CTC limits Salinas. We had been tied up and having a cold one by the time the plug went through the Jct. 3 hours later. The bad part was catching the peddler back the next morning for Bill's final trip. (Dispatchers made it easy on us, only 6 hours on duty)

Nudge