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Robert: The Pacific Electric headquarters was located at 6th and Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. The building is still there, but has been transformed into a loft-apartment building. We have attempted to locate employment records of former employees in the past, but have been unsuccessful and it seems none of these were preserved through the years. The Redondo Division of the Pacific Electric was established in 1911 when it purchased the line a previous company built from Los Angeles to Redondo Beach. As a laborer, your relative could have worked anywhere on this line as directed by management.
Hi Jonathan! Thank-you for contacting us through the Southern Pacific Railroad History Center Forum. Unfortunately, in a search of our files, we have not come across anything connected to a John Milton Campbell. It would be interesting to discover where your great grandfather worked in California on the Southern Pacific. If you are willing to share some of his memoirs surrounding his experiences on the railroad we would be willing to publish some of them for our membership and friend base. As further info, Southern Pacific did not operate in the state of Colorado until the 1990s, so maybe your great grandfather worked for another railroad as well prior to Southern Pacific. You can contact me for questions or comments at pkbaumhefner@comcast.net
Yes, turned out to be a great program! Tell us more! Unfortunately, I had left the SP when this program started. Would love to hear more about it and how it worked.
Peter Kohl, what a great history of a little known or discussed segment of Southern Pacific! You did a fantastic job! Thank-you!
Peter: Thank-you very much for sharing this extensive and very comprehensive study around Southern Pacific Steamships! It’s extremely interesting and part of the Southern Pacific we don’t hear much about.
Hi Doug!
I did some research and found a photo taken by “KeyRouteKen” of Southern Pacific steam locomotive 2312, a 4-6-0 type steam locomotive, working the Stirling City Branch at Paradise in the late 1940s. There was no exact date associated with the photo, but this locomotive could have worked the branch in 1945.
We’ll ask around our members and friends and see if anyone else has some information for you.
Thanks.
Pete
Hi Bob! Yes, astonished is an excellent word to describe my feelings as well when I discovered this practice as a very green and naive manager on the SP! It sounds like you worked 4-4.5 hours on a yard job and were paid for 8 hours. In road switcher territory where I was managing, the crews were working 4-6 hours and getting paid for 12 hours! Then, if you added in the fact that most of the road switcher locomotive engineers were working in “merged territory” (former Pacific Electric) and off assignment, they were making 24 hours of pay for only working 4-6 hours! The merged territory agreement was another “bank account” for the former Pacific Electric crews. They had it down to a science, one would lay off a regular job and then all the others would end up working off assignment. They were making over $100,000 in 1975!
Hi Ken! You bring back many memories of the people who were either consulting for or hired on by APL. You were able to tour the operations of some of the real “garden spots” of the APL network. Kearny NJ was a real “gem”! I’m glad your work helped evaluate what we at APL could actually accomplish prior to the purchase of APL by NOL in 1997. That was a whole additional “opportunity” to help them understand and support the gigantic capability they purchased.
Mike, Thanks for your offer to Bryce. That was great of you to offer!
Bryce, I’m glad you found it! Hopefully it provides the information you are looking for.
Pete
Hi Bryce! I am unaware of individuals who may have the entire collection of Southern Pacific track charts, but I do know they are out there. I just searched for Southern Pacific Railroad Arizona track charts on the internet and found bits and pieces of track charts. I did see one on E-Bay for sale after searching for SP Tucson Division track charts. There are some folks who are members of the Southern Pacific Railroad History Center that spent their SP career in the Engineering Department and worked in Arizona. I’ll “rattle their cage” to see if they know where to find the SP Tucson Division track charts. Thank-you for your interest in the Southern Pacific Railroad and for entering the forum with your request! Pete
Post UP purchase of SP I do know that APL/Pacer was UP’s single largest revenue customer, bringing in over $1 billion of top line revenue to the UP balance sheet. They always stated we gave them a lot of revenue, but they made nothing on the book of business. Typical UP response. If I recall correctly, the former SP portion of the lanes (El Paso, San Antonio, Dallas, Memphis, Houston, New Orleans and beyond, plus the Hermosillo auto parts) accounted for about 35-40% of the total payout to rail providers. APL/Pacer had excellent underlying rates with the SP prior to merger. We seriously thought about ways we could use the SP contractual rates to enhance the bottom line for APL/Pacer.
Andrew’s comment about “Lacy’s Raiders” brought back a chill to my system! I recall my first participation in such an event as a very young
Asst. Trainmaster working out of City of Industry under Mike Mohan who was Trainmaster at the time. Lacy came to town one week and was spending day and night with field efficiency teams on the LA Division. When it was City of Industry’s turn, we all headed down to Bartolo, the junction of the SP Puente Branch and the Union Pacific mainline, over which the Anaheim, Buena Park and Los Nietos Haulers traversed between City of Industry and the sprawling area of Orange County. As the Buena Park Hauler came to a stop at Bartolo we were positioned at the caboose to immediately begin our inspection of the rear end crew and their compliance with the rules. As soon as the train stopped Lacy jumped out of the bushes as the conductor appeared on the rear platform of the caboose. “Hello there Mr. Smith (name changed to protect the innocent)!” “Can you tell me where you are right now?”, Lacy asked. “Well sure, I’m standing right here on the rear of the caboose!”, replied the conductor. All hell broke loose after that and the rear end crew was so flustered I don’t think they answered anything correctly. It was at that time that all of us working at City of Industry decided we would purposefully miss the first question Lacy would ask us, just to get the whole ordeal over with so we could move on with our lives. Fun times!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!
Gene, when the new Marketing Department came on line at SP, we, in the Operating Department, wondered where we were heading as a railroad. We all grimaced and criticized (rightly justified in my opinion) the hiring spree of new Marketing employees, the remodeling of a certain portion of One Market Plaza, the brand new furniture and other expenses associated with this decision while we had to make do with whatever we could find (band aids and bailing wire) to keep things operating for the Customer while keeping costs to a minimum. I even remember having to cut management positions in the field level as many of these new Marketing “experts” were being hired. Then when some of these new Marketing folks, who were nice enough on a personable basis in a general sense, came to review particular aspects of the operation and asked really naive questions without explaining “big picture” thoughts and where they were headed, we all thought it was nothing more than a group of boondogglers, riding trains for fun, living the good life and producing nothing. In retrospect, some good things came out of the Marketing Department efforts, but it was very hard to see at the time. The numerous silos in the Southern Pacific, the egos contained in those silos, and the inability to work as a team across all those silos made it a “no win” situation. I wonder where the railroad would have gone had there never been a Marketing Department. Faster demise, or more viable for a longer time…?
Ann, you bring up some interesting points in the long history APL and then Pacer had with its underlying rail carriers. As the APL Stack Train was developed with the underlying carriers, we soon realized the rail carriers did not fully understand the efficiencies and gains they could realize by operating stack trains. Too many slots (a position on a double stack rail car where a container could be loaded) were left open thereby not utilizing all available loading positions. Nothing worse than an under utilized loaded train carrying around empty slots and air! We decided we could do it better by instructing the rail carriers how to load the trains, in fact, giving them instructions on where each and every container would go on the train. Internally this meant we could prioritize more time sensitive customers by loading them on the top so they would be unloaded first at destination. Of course, the rail carriers had a hard time accepting this new approach of letting a customer tell them how to better do their jobs. We proved to the carriers the actual benefits they could reap by properly loading their trains to full 100% utilization to the extent this whole process became part of the contractual agreement with the underlying rail carriers. I don’t think this load plan process created any anti-trust issues from a legal perspective, but it sure created some animosity at the onset. Imagine that, a customer telling the railroad how to do their business!
