Since these are my photos, I can expand on what you all have been discussing. The Dumbarton Bridge had a bridge tender 24/7 as there was substantial rail traffic, both directions, in the late 1960s. Lyman Fancher was who we knew, and in those days, Bruce MacGregor was also a friend. Lyman was going to school at Cal State Hayward and this job with the SP paid his way. Lyman runs a guest ranch these days in the Steamboat Springs area in Colorado. Lyman used a speeder that was kept at the Newark section houses that were inside the wye. Rarely did they drive out to the bridge. We often rode with Lyman, and that meant spending an entire shift on the bridge. We would drive out on the Levee that separated the Leslie salt ponds from the Bay, and then there was a walk way around the Hetch Hechy water facility with a stairway up to the trestle. We watched the year-long rebuild of a portion of that trestle when they brought in a steam pile driver mounted on a barge that drove all those concrete pilings.

The bridge was almost always kept aligned for rail traffic. There was a telephone out there that connected with the dispatcher, and once in a long while, Lyman would have to copy orders to a passing train. There is a set protocol for boat traffic to signal for the bridge to be opened and on summer weekends, the bridge was sometimes like a merry-go-round. Night traffic on the Bay included fuel barges that supplied Moffat Field which at that time was a very busy Navy facility. The bridge tender had his hands full, and then there were hours when nothing happened. There was a nightly "rock" train that brought aggregates for the cement plants located along the line into the city and that train really shook that bridge.

We often had dinner parties out there and would invite select friends to attend. One memorable night Dick Steinheimer brought out a date and entertained her with a steak dinner, and I don't recall her being amused about it, but I got Stein to autograph one of his books. He later visited me in Colorado and he also knew my brother as the two of them worked at Fairchiild Semiconductor. The fellow who often joined me in visits to see Lyman is Terry Barnes, who recently retired from the UP as a signal maintainer and we still visit with each other.

The 3 cylinder Fairbanks Morse engine was operable and we often ran it just for the hell of it opening the bridge just to see it work. That all came to a crashing halt when the m-o-w foreman told Lyman that he was tired of hoofing gasoline up the long stairway to refuel the engine. Water for the radiator was collected off the roof and stored in a large tank for the radiators. There was no electricity. All the bridge lights for navigation were kerosene. Night lighting was by kerosene lamps, all SP issue stuff. I was working for Lockheed on the Polaris missile program at the time, so I would leave my high tech work and within a half hour, be right back in a time capsule from another day. Neat place in the middle of a mass of humanity, beautiful views, and our own private rail traffic.

I left the Bay Area in 1970 and moved to Silverton, Colorado where I have lived ever since. When Lyman finally graduated, he too moved on and left that job. It paid him and gave him a place to study, except when we would clutter up his life. I understand that the center ring casting that the bridge pivots on was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake and that was the primary reason the fire damaged western trestle approach was never rebuilt. I have some pictures of them flosting the swing portion out to the bridge when it was built and it was quite an operation. Bruce MacGregor found those and passed on copies.