You and I are viewing very different photos

You are looking at Caltrain #43 - me, the rails
rewrite! w/ additions, 8-17-25

David Rector seemed to specialize in dusk and dawn photography. Of those that we have seen, this is one of his best, a shot of Caltrain #43 passing San Jose Yard recorded just after sunrise at about 7:18 AM on a chilly November 29, 1983 morning. Gorgeous!With all due appreciation to the beauty of his photo, I nevertheless see something different. It has to do with the lengths of rail laying about on either side of Southern Pacific's San Jose Yard track #1, next to the train on the westbound main.

David Rector, Wx4 Collection

Barely visible in the photo under SP's Newhall Tower in the distance, is a collection of worn out track machines in the process of (hopefully) being revived by members of an extra gang for another day's work on track #1. I was one of the men struggling to instill life into those recalcitrant devices. Ironically, this was the second time that I participated yanking out rail from #1 track.My first encounter with #1 track was as a switchman in 1978, but in 1979 I took up residency as a brakeman on the San Francisco Freight Brakeman Extra Board. This meant that I still frequently called upon #1 Track, now on Oakland-Watsonville Pool 4 through freight, as well as on various local freights, of which there were still several at the time.

At about 4:30 am on September 15, 1979, I drew the head brakeman job on the WCOAK, a West Colton-Oakland "K" train. The K designated us as a train carrying hazardous chemical, essentially meaning that we were restricted 35 mph. Luckily, the K cars were way back in the train for what happened when we yarded to make a setout in San Jose. At the Santa Clara end of the yard, the young engineer was having trouble keeping up our leisurly pace as we approached the Santa Clara end of the yard on #1 track. We were still moving as I swung off the engine to make our setout cut several cars back from the head end. But then the train stopped a couple of cars ahead of the cut, so I walked up to find out why from the engineer. He said the train just stopped on its own

Being a relative newbie, the obvious-to-any-seasoned-rail explanation failed to jump out at me - some of the train had left the rails and drug us to a halt. The engineer did not cotton onto this either, and a couple of times advanced the throttle to run 4, or so in an attempt to pull the train up further. No dice.

I walked back towards the cut, and as I did so I glanced at the train further back in the darkness. There was just enough light emanating from the other end of the yard to make out the vague outline of our train in the blackness, and something was not right. I walked a few cars further back, and now the train was definitely looking out of kilter. A few more steps, and there we had it: My lantern shined on two boxcar which had assumed a subterranean repose. The rear truck of a boxcar and the lead truck of the following one had burrowed down into the ground until the tops of their wheels barely were barely a foot above surface. This sort of thing was not all that unusual. SP's other than main track" was generally crap. The odd thing was that, even as the cars attempted to emulate a subway train, they remained copled, as did the ir air hoses. This development apparently came as a literal shock to the next six cars, which took the more conventional route by accordianing sideways.

The cars' overall spread away from the rails was not great, but as you will note from the photo, yard track #1 was not all that far removed from the westbound main track hosting the Commute train. This was the first thought that ran through my mind, thank goodness, for after I climbed over to the other side of my train, it appeared that the errant boxcars were very close to impinging upon the main track's sovereignty. And #113, the first train of the morning, was less than five minutes away from departing San Jose's Cahill St. depot. I immediately sprinted (the best one could wearing clunky boots and peering through my lantern beam for any potential ankle-twisters laying on the ground) up to to the engineer and shouted to him to radio a mayday and get #113 stopped. Luckily, news arrived to #113 when it was just a few yards out of the depot.

After awhile, Newhall Tower called. "Highball the setout!" [duh!] The yard crew will double the rear of your train over to track ___ for you to pick up." As it turned out, there was just enough clearance for The Fleet to get by, but at walking speed, lest a car sway. The Commute in Rector's photo was pretty darn close to the derailment site.

So, four years later, there we were, under Newhall Tower preparing to put the finishing touches on #1 track as Rector snapped his photo..As the train passed, Foreman Frank Pacheco was likely in the process of receiving his marching orders from his boss, Roadmaster Ron Measures, whom Frank and the other foremen called Papa Gallo. Foreman Pacheco was a man of the old school who conducted himself with dignity and his gang like an elementary school class: he called out anyone who engaged in idle chit-chat while working. There was old school method to this. It was pretty easy to become injured during a moment of distraction. Even as it was, my raw inexperience caused me significant injury twice during my mere four months' tenure in maintenance of way.Frank's gang was a mishmash of veterans - all hispanic men who migrated from Mexico decades ago - along with three victims of the deep 1980 recession on furlough from other departments - Ron, a clerk from Pacific Motor Trucking, Mike Dolynick a San Jose carman, and me, a trainman. Mike and I were partners on a spike driving machine, and the three of us were the ones who disrupted class with the chitchat. The Hispanic gentlemen largely kept their heads down and did their work without comment. With many years of conditioning behind them, these nearly-elderly men could way outwork we young transplants without breaking a sweat.Early-on I came to understand that they had successfully endured their decades of hard labor because they knew every trick of the trade. If you think that track-work does not require many skills…don't. For instance, right off the bat I learned that I did not even know how to use a simple shovel correctly. Subsequently, I was taught how to drive spikes with a maul without breaking a handle (a cardinal offense) and figuratively, my back. Some of the machinery could take months of practice to adequately master. It could take years to become a top flight operator of a laser track aligning machine.

Given how dismissive many rails were of their bottom-dwelling stature in the railroad hierarchy, it is natural that trackmen tended to return the favor, especially towards trainmen and enginemen as lazy whiners, which indeed many of them were. Thus we three newbies were under scrutiny, but especially me. Just before I arrived, the roadmaster had fired one of my fellow furloughed brakeman due to laziness. But once the men saw that we did not consider ourselves above them or the work, they admitted us into their fraternity of underlings, and moreover, went out of their way to show us the ropes, despite the language barrier.Until the last few weeks, the gang foreman had been a Minnesota Swede named Mark Hennessy. Mark, a very personable, intelligent fellow who later became Caltrain's head track guy, had their respect because he had originally hired out as a track laborer for Chicago & Northwestern, and could do the work. That he could drive two spikes simultaneously with two mauls helped to generate respect.About 20 minutes after #43 passed, we were at work at this very spot. Note the general lack of spikes on #1 track, which indicates that this was where we would begin work. The scattered lengths of rail were what we previously replaced with ribbon rail. The ribbon rail slinking between #1 track and the main would replace the rails on the other side. Mike operated his half of the spike driving machine, while I, as I had done for some time, drove spikes on my rail by hand faster than the nearly useless machine could do. I lost 25 pounds during my first month.It took more than a month for our tiny gang with its decrepit machines to replace ties and lay ribbon rail on the approximately one mile of track between switches, partly because two big freight train derailments at San Jose depot diverted our attention. Truthfully, I don't think that I enjoyed running locomotives later in my career any more than I did pounding spikes amid this very humble and agreeable group of men.With the work done, the gang was disbanded. Foreman Pacheco bid in the Sunnyvale section foreman job, and I followed. It was not so pleasant, because our first order of duty was destructive - to take up the rails in Sunnyvale's small yard. A few years before, I had switched those tracks at length on the Sunnyvale Local.In February I found out that I could hold a huge-paying trainman job in Tucumcari, NM. This was during the overhaul of the line to El Paso, so I wound up doing several stints on work trains, where I occasionally pounded a few spikes just to keep my hand in. My experience also made my non-working hours more convivial, because I spent a goodly part of them drinking with the track gang at a certain bar in Santa Rosa.In conclusion, you and I are observing different pictures.
- EO Gibson

Foreman Hennessy photographed me here operating a spike puller. It worked nominally better than the spike driver.