Notice how the Milpitas Main, track 420, heads right through the middle of the yard. Tracks 422 through 425 were used to store and repair bad order cars in addition to regular rip tracks 425 - 429.

The main yard tracks were spaced so closely together that if you stood between two occupied rails, you could not fit with your shoulders perpendicular to the rail. To keep from being in the foul of ladder rungs and such, you were forced to walk sort of scrunched-up with your elbows in front of your body. One night a few weeks after I hired-out, my all-extra crew was working the west end, sorting-out cars that we would later drag to Fourth Street. Trying to read the switch list, I stood between my goat and another track, my shoulders perpendicular to the rails because the other track was unoccupied where I stood, though there was a cut of boxcars on that rail about five feet in front of me. Unbeknownst to us, another crew was working the east end. Suddenly, a cut of their cars slammed into those boxcars, which in turn slammed into my left shoulder, spinning me around and knocking me into the other helper, who had been standing straddling the rail. I managed to hook him with my right arm and we both tumbled out of the way. We then lept to our feet, hoping that the engineer hadn't seen this near-tragic display of stupidity, and he hadn't. This immediate worry out of the way, we both commenced to tremble. And then we went back to work. This was / is railroading in a nutshell. No wonder so many guys drank heavily in the pre-random-testing days, eh?

If you had properly prepared, one of San Jose's sweet jobs was that of the night College Park Herder. His shanty was located at the west end of the yard at the 414 switch circle on the map. Normal duties consisted of occasionally lining roundhouse switches for the hostlers, but the wise herder kept the hostlers supplied with Wild Turkey, so that he could devote his shift to watching tv or sleeping. Typically once a night, he would get a call from College Park Tower to line and highball a train coming off the Milpitas line, and that was about it. Shortly after I went braking, I was sightseeing on the steps of a Sub vestibule one day, and as we went by, I noticed a cut of several cars standing in various states of verticality behind the shanty. The crew was moping around, waiting for the hook, and I caught the eye of one of them, who flapped his arms like a seagul's wings and then shrugged. Translated: "We screwed-up a 'drop' (flying switch), and now we're screwed.

The old wye switch is at bottom right of center. You'll notice that the west leg went through the middle of the shops, and the wye was the primary method for turning power in both steam and diesel days. The turntable was short (90 feet, I think), and when the Fleet power accumulated in the evenings, it was easier to lash a bunch of engines together and have the hostlers take them around the wye,

And speaking of the roundhouse: