Tools Of The Trade

From 1906, at Crows Landing, CA on the Southern Pacific between Tracy and Fresno.

One of the joys of being home during the shelter in place for the quarantine for this virus has been the chance to go through some boxes; cleaning out the junk of accumulated years and find some long lost treasures.

One such experience was the opening of a box from years back and the finding of two similar sets of keys. The first ring of keys goes back to 1978 and my first days as a volunteer at the California Railway Museum at Rio Vista Junction, between Fairfield and Rio Vista, on State Highway 12 in Solano County. Initially, a group of young folks went up to the Junction just on a lark, but got involved in all kinds of ways. I became part of the Operating Department, first as a streetcar conductor and later as a motorman, running the electric cars. I also ended up often as the engineer on the electric locomotive whenever we needed to move various cars about the museum.

The museum keys? If memory serves, I had to put down a deposit on a switch key and a system B key. The switch key was a pattern once used by the Key System. The B key offered access to lesser items such as gates and other padlocks. Later keys added to the ring included a key to open coach door or locomotive cab door locks as well as shop door locks and others. (I haven’t been active at the Museum since the late 90’s and have heard that all the locks were changed at some point. Yet, I have all the memories associated with these keys.)

When the opportunity came along to get involved with a steam locomotive, I took it. The museum had entered into a long term lease agreement for four steam locomotives. One was already on display, having arrived on it’s own wheels in 1966. Two smaller locomotives from a lumber company in Oregon were trucked from storage in Oakland near the Bay Bridge. But the real attraction was a 1909 survivor that was to move on it’s own wheels. From the first time I saw her, I was well and truly hooked. And that led to a whole series of mis-adventures in those years and since…

Western Pacific steam locomotive 94 at Olcott siding on the Sacramento Northern mainline in Solano County, at twilight.

Now I have always had an interest in railroads. On my mother’s side, it was her father with his own Lionel trains that struck my fancy whenever the special moment came to set up the trains at his home in San Francisco. A classic prewar steam locomotive and a postwar diesel locomotive were always popular with me.

Genetically, I can find railroading as a career in the family going back to the early days along the Central Pacific and the Transcontinental Railroad across Utah and Nevada. A couple of seminal moments in the 1970’s really amped up my interest. Both are thanks to my father’s mother, who was living with her sister in Reno during this time. As a recently retired school teacher, she probably didn’t realize her role in my interest when she gave me a hardback copy of Beebe and Clegg’s 1949 “Virginia and Truckee: A Story of Virginia City And Comstock Times.” Suddenly, the literary door was open to the world of railroading in a way it had never been before. Visits to the Walnut Creek Library led to other volumes on all kinds of railroads.

Now I had already been exposed to railroading at a young age. My first cab ride in a diesel locomotive had come at the age of 3, when my great grandfather, Christopher Cameron Walker, arranged for a ride around the Sparks yard of the Southern Pacific with himself and my own father. In a bit of a throwback moment, my father had enjoyed many a ride with his grandfather on trips east from Sparks to Carlin (where they stayed with an uncle) and back again. These trips usually involved taking the diesel powered City of San Francisco one way and then bringing another passenger train the other with a steam locomotive, including some of the SP’s famed GS class and cab forwards. Chris was fortunate enough to have recorded an oral history with some local ladies during a Sparks historical event; and I have enjoyed listening to him in detail in the years since I first learned of it’s existence.

That was in 1976. It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I had been busy earlier in June after classes ended, with an internship at radio station KSFO in San Francisco. But when the chance came to head off to Reno, visiting my grandmother and aunt for a week, I was all for it. My railroading interest had been groomed by joining the local model railroad club as a member of the Boy Scout Explorer post. Here I found other people as nuts for interested in trains as I was. The real kicker on this visit to the Silver State? I was to be mobile on my own, driving solo in my grandmother’s Ford Mustang.

One place that was essential was the Nevada Historical Society above the University of Nevada’s Reno campus. They were (and still are) the keepers of the original reel-to-reel tape recordings of that oral history with Chris Walker from 1966. I have been back many times since.

A few other places and items of note from that adventure were the sightings of a few miscellaneous items in Reno/Sparks that summer. A former Key System bridge train had made it’s way to storage on a spur off the Western Pacific in Reno. Having sat out in the Sierra weather for almost 30 years at that point, it wasn’t in too bad a shape overall. But it later ended up being scrapped. Another was a former Virginia and Truckee motorcar body. Made of wood, the years had not been kind. It ended up in the collection of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, where it collapsed under it’s own weight in a wind event.

Of course, I visited the Sparks yard of the SP again. And I did some early railfanning east and west of town. The real meat of the road trip was to be able to head off to Carson City to see the remaining Virginia and Truckee; the depot on Washington Street and the great stone enginehouse. And that summer saw then opening operations of the revived railroad in service in Virginia City. It was a grand, glorious adventure for a 17-year old train nut enthusiast.

The following summer after high school graduation, I went back to Reno for a bigger adventure. It turned out that I had other relatives who were still working for the SP in Sparks. One was a yard master, out on disability after a third heart attack. I met him for a long lunch at the Nugget (where we met Red Skelton, who was in town doing one of his many shows). We talked about family, the railroad, toured the old station (moved from Wadsworth in the summer of 1904) and yard tower. A visit to the “roundhouse” (a one stall, one locomotive length steel, pre-fab structure as compared to the larger brick roundhouse that had once stood nearby along with the large shop and back shop complex) included spending time with other railroaders who had worked with Chris.

In the end, the advice given that day was to go home, get some college years and then come back to the railroad. Good advice it was too, as the recession of the 80’s saw furloughs and lay-offs of many railroaders nationwide. And it lead to 26 years in a good job that was secure all of those.

A final element from that 1977 visit to Reno was to be gifted with a collection of photographs, newspaper clippings and a set of keys that my great grandfather had carried with him during his years in service. There is a coach key for cabooses and locomotives as well as other car doors. And a couple of well used switch keys from the SP. These were tools he used every day on the railroad and having them reminds me of that.

Over the years, I have added a few other keys including ones from the Western Pacific, Sacramento Northern and Pacific Electric. While I didn’t follow Chris onto the SP, I have my own railroad experiences thanks to him and others in our family. Finding these keys this past week was a good reminder of some fine memories of good people (and bad) and some fun times in interesting places. Here’s to more to come!