The SP has made many changes in various operations,facilities, yards, even routes, over the last hundred and fifty years. There are a number of historical organizations and groups with various resources to help to understand that history.

Taylor became redundant due to several factors, including just plain age...

The building of West Colton, which relocated the work done at the Indio yard, closing Indio in 1972, also had additional capacity for the growing local traffic moving to more suburban locations in OC and the IE during the 60's and 70's. SP had done this with the development of the City of Indrustry complex and hump during the 60's.

West Colton was supposedly designed to be so efficient that it could replace some of the work done at Taylor, and divert more Valley trains from departing Taylor for Bakersfield, instead sending them out of West Colton and up the Palmdales Cutoff, which also had had CTC installed in the mid 70's.

The volume and nature of traffic in the LA Terminal changed significantly between the end of the 60's, with a lot of older industrial plants closing and/or moving to the suburbs, and carload traffic was declining as intermodal increased, even as early as the 70's. The Staggers Act, which deregulated intermodal competions barriers, caused massive switches to trucks and intermodal for certain commodities (perishable is one good example), and to the "new fangled" containers.

Taylor was kept open for so long, because West Colton failed to achieve the hoped for levels of productivity, and a man named George Delellis, the LA Terminal Superintendent, ran Taylor so well, that on a per shift basis, LA's Taylor Hump would handle more cars than the supposedly "more efficient" "supercuts" being handled at West Colton. George also kept up good service to the carload customer base SP still had. The gas crisis, recession, and inflation of the late 70's and early 80's put the "fork" into Taylor, and it was done.

Even before the Staggers Act SP saw the gradual shifting away from carload industrial switching and close down of yards in the LA Terminal complex, starting with the Cornfield, Bullring, Links complex by the late 70'S and a reduction in yard jobs at Taylor. With the Staggers Act, the transitioning of indusrial and logistics to the IE and the Ports, the massibe increase in intermodal traffic, Taylor was good now, like the now "shrinking" Bullring (as more and more tracks were scrapped, for storing empty pig and well cars for the intermodal terminal at the SP "Shops" yard off of Mission Road.

During this same period of the early 80's SP got it's first well cars, the Dolores Yard began handling more of the carload and intermodal traffic for the "South" branches, and the ports, and the ICTF was built.

By 1985, I attended my first meeting to discuss the construction of a consolidated, fully grade seperated, high capacity line to consolidate all of the huge increased in rail container traffic to the Ports of LA and Long Beach, along the original LA and San Pedor RR line on Alameda Street, and Taylor was mostly shut down, except for engine services...

Taylor Yard was originally a very small yard, out across the LA River on the old San Fernando Road, where the Taylor Mill was located. Taylor owned the land and gave SP an easement for transportation purposes, on the land that was the "first" Taylor Yard (which later consisted of a small "D" yard at the bottom end of C yard at Dayton Tower.

This lower part of Taylor Yard, where the lower end of C yard and D yard were, was sold to the LA County MTA along with the passenger easement for Metrolink Commuter services, and is today the location of the Metrolink main shops and trains storage complex in LA. The rest of Taylor is abandonned, built over, or a "State Park", where the "toxic" Taylor Roundhouse foundations can be seen today from Metrolink, or that video I posted last week.

Today, the Metrolink Main to Glendale has been realigned away from San Fernando Road, and follows the route of the old "roundhouse lead, from the ruins of Taylor Roundhouse to the Glendale Freeway. The only "original" track in Taylor Yard, still in use today, is the "slide", the old A yard lead track that parallels the mainline from the Glendale Freeway up to the Glendale Depot. It is used mostly today to store well cars for the Shops.

Taylor, like Bayshore, was one of those places that defined the SP as a railroad during that era, now gone, except for these memories and photos...