Re: Cal Northern operations
Author: Gary Waddell
Date: 04-21-2010 - 17:34

I'm entirely out of the loop on any changes since the Fortress takeover, and can't offer much about the Tracy job, but...

As was mentioned above, the Corning job came south with outbound cars and met the Maxwell job with inbound cars at the Cortena siding (north of Williams). The Corning job returned north and the Maxwell returned south with the day's outbound cars... The Davis and Maxwell jobs were still based out of Woodland at that time and tomorrow's inbound cars were left south of Woodland (just inside the yard limits). In the mornings, the Maxwell would collect its cars and head north while the Davis switcher worked the industries in Woodland. At some point the Davis job would take its outbound cars along with the Maxwell's outbound cars (using the Maxwell power, I think) to Davis and drop them for interchange. After that, the Davis job would collect tomorrow's inbound cars from the interchange and return to Woodland to possibly sort tomorrow's cars and tie up... This scheme may have changed since 2009, so I welcome any corrections from the locals.

Seems from a recent visit and local chatter that the switcher at Fairfield/Suisun (the GP15-1) was eliminated and all work is no performed by the Fairfield/Suisun job using the Union Pacific LRD90 power that brings in the day's inbound cars. The industries in FF/SUI used to be switched in the mornings and the inbound cars for the Napa area were hauled over the hill and dropped next to the enginehouse at Napa Junction. After the inbounds were dropped, the Napa outbounds were collected and the UP power returned to FF/SUI where additional outbound cars were added to the train before tying up. I believe the call time for the LRD90 was 9:00PM back then.

The Napa job started at Napa Junction and worked everything in the area, including the Napa Valley RR (Napa Wine Train) and the customers at Mare Island on an as-needed basis. Inbound cars brought in the day before by the Fairfield/Suisun job were sorted and switched, with the outbounds usually staged in the Lombard yard for ease of transaction. Alstom has opened a passenger car rebuild facility on Mare Island, so Alco Metal and XKT Engineering may be seeing sporadic service on Mare Island now, but I haven't heard if the Napa job is taking care of those duties or not... I didn't do much railfanning on weekdays, but I believe that any trips by the Napa job over the hill to the FF/SUI area were rare.

Once again, I've been out of state for a while and speak of yesteryear, so any corrections to current ops are welcome.



Subject Written By Date/Time (PST)
  Cal Northern operations JBB 04-20-2010 - 19:38
  Re: Cal Northern operations Mike Tuman 04-20-2010 - 20:09
  Re: Cal Northern operations Captain Underpants 04-21-2010 - 01:28
  Re: Cal Northern operations DON---NAPA 04-21-2010 - 08:31
  Re: Cal Northern operations Gary Waddell 04-21-2010 - 17:34
  Re: Cal Northern operations Captain Underpants 04-22-2010 - 01:17
  Re: Cal Northern operations caboverbob 04-22-2010 - 18:29
  Re: Cal Northern operations Gary Waddell 04-22-2010 - 19:29
  Re: Cal Northern operations JBB 04-22-2010 - 20:29


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