Joe,

8th Street Produce Market was originally served by the PE, off of the PE LB line main into downtown. The 8th Street PE jobs, used to go to work at an 8th Street shanty, later they went on duty at Butte Street, adjacent to the SP J yard, down at 25th Street. Today this is where the Alameda Corridor trench goes down under 25th Street to enter the corridor.

Prior to sometime around the early late 70's early 80's, a "PE" protected job took produce up to 8th Street "PE" side, via Amoco Jct. and up Long Beach Avenue (today's Blue Line), across Washington (north of where the Blue Line enters Washington) and up the "old" PE main as far as 8th Street where it then ended. I ran this PE protected job off of the extra Board several times.

Sometime in the early-mid 80's they put a new connection into the 8th Street Produce Market from the Alameda "SP" side, and for a few years a handful of cars were spotted with great difficulty, do to having to move trucks blocking the 2 spurs that were left. I switched it once working the City job in emergency off of my regular job, when they were short of hogheads.

I believe the spur to 8th Street Produce Market was still active, and may have been receiving an occasional car until "maybe" as late as, the early to mid 90's. Others an here will have a more accurate timeline on that.

By the time I was hired to assess and try to document all of the active Alameda Street traffic and tracks in 2009, as a consultant subcontracting to the LA CRA, there was no evidence of any traffic. Though it was still technically accessible, from using the old "back way" (UP's old access from J yard up to SP 8th Street team, (the old LA-SL/UP connection to SP-UP's old Grand Central Station between 4th and 5th Street). Thus, it was "technically" the last "active" spur, accessible off of the "Street", by then.

I operated this job in emergency on a Friday midnight "City" job, then operating out of J yard,about 3 weeks before I took my buyout, in the late 80's, and so I took my wife along for a "last ride", it was a hoot, we almost hit a truck at Olympic, and I almost had to "set her out" at Sambos, with the "2 am" crowd... She was not amused at the prospect of joining the "working girls" at Sambos.

IIRC we may have spotted a refer at 8th Street that night, but by then, there was almost nothing active left north of 7th Street but ghosts and memories of 120 years of the Los Angeles and San Pedro, or SP, on Alameda in downtown LA.