Chad Wrote:
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> 1) What is the regular traffic? Coil cars, Box
> Cars to a paper company, any help would be nice

R&A Trucking on 77th Ave receives inbound loads of coil steel, unloads them and warehouses them, then trucks them to NUMMI Motors (i.e., Toyota) at Warm Springs (i.e., Fremont). Longview Fibre has a corrugating plant on 85th Ave that receives inbound boxcars of rolled paper and ships out scrap paper. Bay Area Warehouse is across San Leandro Street from Longview and receives clay and sand in boxcars. The customers are switched Sunday through Thursday evenings by the "Long Street Job," a yard job that originates in West Oakland. For a comparison of how the industrial base of East Oakland has changed over the years, until around 1970 there were nine yard jobs working the Melrose Drill each weekday - three Western Pacific (which owned the tracks) and six Southern Pacific (which had trackage rights). The drill track itself was installed circa 1923.

> 2) Recent track work removed sidings.

The Melrose Drill was removed last spring between 54th and 81st. New connections from the main track to the Drill were installed south of 81st and north of 92nd. The part between 54th and 66th had been out of service since 2006. There were no active customers on it since circa 2000, or south of 92nd since circa 2005.

> In particular a turn where a boxcar often was loaded
> with scrap paper.

The spur into Smurfit was removed as part of the above track reconfiguration.

> 3) Is this connection to Niles Canyon UP line?

Yes. Originally the Western Pacific First Subdivision of the Western Division, now the Oakland Sub of UP's Roseville Service Unit.

> For example could the ACE train hang a right after
> passing throuhg Niles Canyon then take this line
> to Oakland Coliseum for a passenger transfer to
> BART? Seems like that would be easier then riding
> a bus from the Pleasanton ACE station to
> Dublin/Pleasanton BART.

UP would love to sell the line between Niles and Melrose (High Street) to an agency that would operate commuter trains on it. Time will tell. Currently there is no through freight service on it and it's out of service between the Oakland/San Leandro border and south Union City. The "54 Local" out of Warm Springs works as far north as Carpenter (south Union City) and the Long Street Job works as far south as 92nd Ave.

> 4) At 106th, the line goes down the street and
> definitely looks out of service. The chain link
> fence is permenantly built across the tracks on
> the turn of the rail. Any notion what this line
> was for? If I bought a house on 106th, can I get a
> car load of whatever dleivered to the middle of
> the street?

SP's Stonehurst Branch left SP's main track at Elmhurst (98th Ave) and curved eastward to run up 105th Ave. Mr. Miller has provided you a detailed history of it. It crossed the WP at grade at Stonehurst. In the late Seventies or very early Eighties, SP abandoned the portion between Elmhurst and Stonehurst and built a new connection between the Melrose Drill and the line going up 105th Ave. The track you see curving through the schoolyard is that connection. The remaining portion of the line, which served the old Chevrolet parts warehouse on East 14th street (which was last used for transloading cotton), was abandoned in the Nineties.