[Jack Fuller]

In 1995 I went to Roseville as a Temporary Night Dummy, to ‘help’. The one blessing of working nights was that there was no interference from HQ. It was all yours.

So, to learn the place, I went up up the tower, introduced myself, and watched and listened.

The swing AG, Al Kamrar, asked “What are you doing in the tower?”

I said, “Watching and listening. I’m not gonna learn about RV looking at a CRT.”

Al said, “But…but…but Officers never come up into tower!”

[wfkeeney]

During the time I was Assisstant Terminal Superintendent at Roseville, TOPs and the then-new terminal management software got rolled out — inventory got computerized, along with trim lists. My old head afternoon AG, Joe Carlini, swore it would never work: he trusted the pen-and-paper lists of ancient practice instead. So, a bit of patient training was in order, and not just for Joe. Well, some time went by, and the new-fangled technology turned out to wpork pretty well. So well, in fact that, when the “System” eventually failed (as all such systems eventually do) one afternoon, Carlini threw his hands up as if paralyzed, saying he “couldn’t do anything!”. Dependency had arrived. Fortunately, there were still Number 2 pencils and pads of paper to hand….

wfk

[Peter Baumhefner]

Thanks for those interesting facts about Roseville Yard. Having spent all my time on the Los Angeles Division I had little knowledge of Roseville or its surrounding area. You bring up an excellent point about naming things but not knowing why. That history is escaping us and we need to attempt to capture it and memorialize it somehow so it remains with the overall history of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Thanks for your input!

[Author]

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