Movie Night IX: Campbell/San Jose in 1996

If you want excitement and drama, you'll probably want to go back to the Good Wrinkles movie from Sunsweet. Tonight's movie won't have the action of the sweet Santa Clara prune fencing with the acidic prunes of Oregon.

But if you're borderline obsessive-compulsive, and enjoy minutely examining historic videotape for hints about San Jose's fruit industries, then check out the video below - a ride on a Siemens diesel railcar from Campbell to San Jose in 1996. There's not much to see, of course; even then, most of the signs of the fruit industry were long gone. There are points where the train ride goes past the former sites of canneries. At the 5:45 mark, you'll see the train going past the site of the Ainsley Cannery, now completely covered in houses. The sawtooth warehouses just north of the Ainsley Cannery are also visible. At the 19 minute mark, you'll see the train going past Race Street, and I was surprised by the hints about all the sidings for Contadina, U.S. Products, and Denver Meat either buried in the pavement or visible by the switch ties still visible under the track.

WP fans may want to look at the diamond at the WP crossing. Looks like there'd been three tracks crossing there at one point, though one track is long gone and the diamond carrying the other has been yanked up and dumped next to the tracks.

More Prototype Ideas

All those great model railroad skills might be useful for more than just building models. How about keeping older industrial buildings looking suitably worn for Hollywood filming?

I saw some cool industrial buildings in the Web tv series The Guild in the latest season. It turns out their shooting location is a collection of old LA buildings explicitly set up as movie locations. Check out this photo of one of the exteriors to see a mix of brick and corrugated steel buildings, varying rooflines, and lots of interesting loading doors and overhangs. Bonus points if you can figure out how to kitbash these buildings using commercially available kits.

We ought to thank Hollywood for another way to keep buildings like this in use, otherwise they would have been torn down for generic office buildings long ago.

And if you've got any rusty pieces of corrugated steel in your backyard, send 'em down so they can patch their also rusty shed roof with matching pieces!

"The Old Sooty, Murky, Smoky Roundhouse"

If you were in San Jose seventy-eight years ago this week, you would have been celebrating in the streets, for the much-hated Southern Pacific main line running down Fourth Street through downtown was on its way out. Out went the freight trains blocking traffic and the worn-out old stick-style station at the top of Market Street. (The neighborhood around the station was rough enough that I've seen it described as "the waterfront".) In its place was a new mainline bypassing San Jose to the west, and a beautiful new station at Cahill Street - the current Diridon Station.

And it's possible through the old papers to read about the celebrations, but let's first recap why San Jose shoppers were having to dodge refrigerator cars when acting like good consumers.

The Southern Pacific built down Fourth Street from Julian to Keyes in the 1870's when they were first building south towards Gilroy, Salinas, and (eventually) Los Angeles. SP needed permission from the city to run on the city streets. Although they got their franchise, it was only good for fifty years. When the franchise ended in 1916, the city wanted the tracks out. SP already owned the land along a proposed new route bypassing the city to the west, but ten years of fights with the California Railroad Commission over the line ended just as the neighbors in the new Palm Haven subdivision in Willow Glen started protesting the arrival of trains near their houses. Willow Glen was against the railroad enough to incorporate in 1927 as their own city which they hoped could just pass laws banning the new train tracks. Other fights centered over the numerous street crossings: San Jose city wanted underpasses or overpasses to avoid get rid of the potentially deadly crossings they were certain would be created. The Great Depression slowed construction even as the critics were mollified with a more distant routing. Some underpasses were constructed by 1931; others only went in late 1935.

But eventually, the current routing was decided, the new station built, and it was time for the cut-over. And then the celebrations began.

I've always been interested in the Fourth Street line and in the old Market Street station, partially because of the incongruity of mainline trains running past Victorians on Fourth, and partially from my interest in the old depot (as seen in the Market Street station shelf layout I built. I'd never, however, read the newspaper from those happy days before the switchover, and I was pleasantly surprised when I finally did look.

So let's look at some of the celebration, shall we?

November 7, 1935 "Present indications are that the railroad job will be completed by the end of the year, and the old, North First Street station an abandoned building, soon to be destroyed."

Note the picture of the old station there. The train shed held only two tracks, so the passenger cars just in front of the shed must either be a third track, or cars awaiting being spotted in place. Even with two tracks, the Market Street station handled as many commute trains as Caltrain sees today, as well as several major passenger trains (Daylight, Lark, Coaster, Sunset Limited). The station personnel also handled all those trains while switching of engines and shuffling passenger cars across multiple downtown and residential grade crossings. I'd love to see how they managed to do all that without hitting cars and pedestrians hourly.

November 11,1935 The Bird Avenue underpass, eighth and last of the grade separations being built by the Southern Pacific... will be opened to traffic Thursday morning. The line still needs the bridge at Los Gatos Creek (just next to the San Carlos Street overpass) finished, though a bridge over Guadalupe Creek is just being completed. There's also an underpass at Almaden Road in the works, though it won't be done til next year.

November 16, 1935 has a photo of the new and old station compared, but the new station news got crowded out by the wreck of the Daylight passenger train in Gilroy, and the fright of a truck driver on Monterey Highway as the derailed locomotive charged at him.

November 22, 1935 Bridge across Los Gatos Creek supports its first train.

November 26, 1935 The San Jose News notes that one part of the old station will be moving to the new station: the fence that kept station patrons off the mainline tracks.

A historic ornamental iron fence between the main station of the Southern Pacific and the railroad tracks was removed yesterday, but it will not be discarded.
The fence, which has been in service for years, will be used at the new Southern Pacific station which is rapidly nearing completion. The fence originally encircled the first Southern Pacific hospital in San Francisco at Fourteenth and Mission Streets. It was originally designed by Dr. F. T. Ainsworth nearly half a century ago.
The fence was about all that remained of the hospital after the 1906 earthquake and because of its worth and design was stored away. In 1911, when W. C. Morrison was division engineer here and Peter N. Nelson of Minnesota Avenue was superintendent of bridges and buildings, they prevailed on the Southern Pacific to let them have the fence to place about the station built here in 1873... Only one bit of the fence will be missing, that which had to be cut by acetylene torches from around a sycamore tree, to save the tree."

(Wonder if that fence is still at Diridon station?)

December 9, 1935 George Clark, who rode the in the first South Pacific Coast narrow gauge train through San Jose in 1878, gets an invitation to ride on the first train over the new West Side line. Clark had also been an SP employee, losing both legs in different accidents, and having a hand crushed by a mishap with a third train.

December 9, 1935 Now that the Bird Ave. overpass is done, the last track can be laid at Home St.

December 20, 1935

The San Jose News leads with a photo and article on the last run of Train #108, the 8:30 a.m. arrival from points north to San Jose State. Train 108 was a 7:00 am run out of San Francisco, and although the timetables I've seen only show it running to the Market Street station, the news of its loss certainly shows the train ran further south to the San Jose state campus. The last train had 175 passengers, all of whom would be having to bus in from the new Cahill St. station come next term.

December 28, 1935 On December 28, we learn about the events planned for the grand day. They were appropriately grand, as grand as you'd expect from thirty years of waiting: a special train from the old Market Street station to south of San Jose, and then a return back to the new Cahill Street station, speeches, boy scout with flags, the Star Spangled Banner played by the Southern Pacific Band, and a luncheon back at the Hotel De Anza.

Buried on page three were the human interest stories about the workers moving from old to new station, and some reporter must've had a great time reporting "the new, elaborate, modern station… has its advantages, but to many of them the old, sooty, murky, smoky roundhouse has developed a sentimental attachment that is difficult to get away from." C.F. Quinn, ticket clerk looked forward to the new station, but reminisced:

The ticket room here is nothing to remark about, but it has served its purpose very well and I guess I'll miss the old tin ticket rack here and people yelling from three places at once for information about train schedules.

There's also a full history of the relocation thirty years in the making, including some half-insane suggested plans to elevate the main line above Fourth Street. I imagine trains full of sugar beets and other messy and open cars would have added some excitement to the lives of downtown residents.

The Merchants' Association secretary, William Baylor, sticks to the positive with "the railroad has given San Jose an excellent Christmas present. The whole project has put our railroad facilities in wonderful condition and in line with the times."

Charles Crothers, president of the realty board, in constrast goes negative. "Just as we were ashamed of the old station we will be proud of this beautiful new one, which is a fine building." Ashamed? That old building looked awfully cool to me!

December 30,1935 The big day. Today's paper isn't in Google's archive, and tomorrow's paper only mentions the switch to the new line in an editorial:

San Jose's big day has come and gone. Yesterday was cold and uncomfortable on the outside, but in the thousands of hearts of local people there glowed warmth and pleasure that at last the quarter-century-old project of railroad relocation was being completed, and not only if Fourth Street being cleared of trains but a station is being put into use that combines modern beauty with the utmost safety and convenience...

With the last few days of rain and cold, it's not hard to imagine what the ceremonies must have felt like to the participants.

If you want to see what the ceremony looked like, find a copy of Prune County Railroading, and check out page 72, where there's several photos of the special first train on the route (correctly approaching Cahill St. station from the south as we saw in the schedule of festivities), along with a couple staged shots of SP officials with the crew for the first train and speaking to the crowd.

(Update: Actually, Google News Archive does have the issue, but it's listed as part of the December 29 issue. Read more about that issue in a later blog post.)

December 31, 1935 Today's issue leads with the concrete indications of change - an action photo of the tracks at Monterey Road being pulled up. The Monterey Road crossing was particularly dangerous and the site of many a fatal accident. The main line here ran east of Monterey Road all the way to downtown, but just south of Oak Hill Cemetery, the lines cut over to the west side of the highway at an oblique angle. Even though the line switch had only occurred hours before, the line had been broken at Fourth and Julian and Monterey Road by afternoon. The industrial areas south of town (such as the Barron-Gray cannery and American Can) now could only be reached by a spur off to the new line.

January 1, 1936 And on January 1, 1936, it was all completely over. The San Jose News reported

Fourth Street flagmen, like the trains which they flagged, have been eliminated, with three exceptions, by the Southern Pacific relocation. Flag stations at Fourth and Virginia, Martha, and Keyes Streets will remain for the present, being in use in the industrial section, but these may be replaced with automatic wig-wags.
Approximately 30 men, many of them aged, who formerly warned the public of the approach of trains at crossings between Julian and Reed Streets, must now be placed in other railroad departments, according to Roadmaster S. R. Cupples. Many of them will be placed on the pension list.
The station houses will be moved in some cases. Others will be wreched.

I'd love to see what Edith Daley thought, but Google never scanned the late December, 1935 newspapers from the Evening News. (Even if they did, Edith was the San Jose librarian by then, and probably wasn't available for such articles.) Time for a trip to Main Library, perhaps, to see how the other newspapers handled the big day.

Lingering Projects

I'm taking some days off around Christmas, and I'm using the time to get through some lingering projects. The Western Pacific tower at West San Jose got glazing and some details, and it's prety much ready to go on the layout. Here's some current photos.

Note the bicycle against the wall. That came from the scrapbox; I don't even remember what plastic model kit it came from. It's pretty lame - just a flat injection molded piece - but with a bit of paint and Sharpie work to add color, it adds a bit of detail to make the building looked lived-in. Don't completely discount those cheap plastic kits!

Also getting some love and kindness is the Sunsweet Plant #1 in Campbell, which has been lingering half-built for at least a year. The roof went on this week, and as soon as some door castings are added, it'll be ready for some photos as well.

I'm glad for the blog if only to help me keep track of progress. I knew the Sunsweet building had been lingering, but I hadn't thought it had been that long!

Abinante and Nola In Flames

I've written a lot on Abinante and Nola, the dried fruit packer that operated across the tracks from the Del Monte cannery in the 1950's. Their name is still on the building on my layout even though the company didn't even exist in the early 1930's when my layout is set. Still, they're a favorite packer for me, so I keep an eye out for details about them when I'm doing online searches.

A recent newspaper search turned up the story of the loss of their first plant out on Stevens Creek Road towards Cupertino. I'd heard from the family that the plant had burned down some time in the 1940's, and the San Jose Evening News on May 20, 1940 confirms this - the plant went up in flames that morning. Photos in the paper show the boiler and metal wheels of carts for carrying dried fruit flats as the only survivors.

Fire of unknown origin destroyed the Abinante & Nola dried fruit packing plant on Stevens Creek Road and a large stock of dried punes stored in the building early this morning. Loss was not immediately estimated, but is expected to total several thousand dollars.
Discovered by passing motorists, the fire had swept through the entire plant and efforts of volunteers to save the burning building were unsuccessful. The blaze occurred outside the limits of any fire fighting district, but the Burbank fire district men and apparatus, led by Chief Jack Suratt, responded and saved adjacent buildings.
The Abinante & Nola plant, operated by Sam Abinante and Frank Nola, was formerly known as the West Side Fruit Company and was one of the oldest packing plants in the county.

I'd always suspected Abinante and Nola had occupied the West Side Fruit Growers Association property, but this confirms it. It's irrelevant for the model railroad, of course, but tying the story together is just as much fun!

Edith Daley visits Herbert Packing

Edith Daley was only a San Jose Evening News writer through about 1922. After that, she becomes the long-serving librarian for San Jose. Luckily, her few years on the paper left some gems, including her visit to the George Herbert Packing Co. at 3rd and Keyes south of downtown. George Herbert had been a dried fruit packer with a large, barn-like structure (pretty much the uniform for dried fruit packers) on Lincoln Ave. He sold out to Sunsweet in 1918, but must have wanted to stay in the fruit business, so he bought the Frank-Smith cannery at 3rd and Keyes and started canning.

Edith went to visit in July 1919, and her article in the July 19 Evening News certainly shows her excitement:

Mr. Barthold, the superintendent, grows enthusiastic over the big boilers and the 300 feet of spur track, the 40,000 square feet of warehouse space, the surrounding blocks of property owned by the company, and the fact that his is a "six line plant." The outside property means that the cannery will never be crowded and that all further improvements contemplated can be rapidly brought to completion. You learn how the syrup is made down stairs and then pumped upstairs in order to come down again and be "dished up" into the cans by that rotating "syrup-eating" machine so nearly human it is uncanny! (If anything can be uncanny in a canning factory!) There is a big comfortable free bus that makes the trips to East San Jose every day for the benefit of 35 of the employes. There is a cafeteria and a kindergarten! At the cafeteria everything is served from breakfast to dinner - a substantial hot dinner at night. There's everything from a sandwich to a home-made pie a la mode---and at moderate cost. There are dignified tables; but the long white counter is so attractive to the women workers that a sign has been found necessary. It reads: "as far as possible we want the counter for the men." Sitting at a counter to eat is simply one of man's inborn rights and no amount of suffrage can change it!"

I didn't know that thing about inborn rights and sitting at the counter. Time to claim my birthright at Denny's.

Then the superintendent proved that he is not only a packer but a poet! We went upstairs to visit the sunny offices and he called my attention to the "view". It was an attractive picture to look down over the immense fruit room with its rows and rows of cutting and canning tables splashed with bits of silver from the cans and the pans where the women in their blue aprons and white caps worked interestedly and happily. The blue and white and silver gleams of that picture with the contrasting soft colors of the apricots would make a poet of any superintendent with wide-awake eyes!"

And that's the greatest part of Edith's writing - where a few Sanborn maps might hint at a building, or photos might hint at the contents, articles like these highlight what the canneries were like when you were inside them: full of color, full of noise, full of smells, and chock-full of some awfully interesting people. If I was modeling the area around Third and Keyes, I'd be painting some figurines blue and white to represent those workers taking a quick smoke break outside and contemplating their pie-a-la-mode at dinner.

I'll let you read the rest of the article - last year's production, the cannery's friendliness to visitors, and the drying plant on Monterey Road - but I'll end with Edith's final words:

"Labor has presented not problem at the Herbert Packing Company. Things are well handled in this regard, but when the peaches begin to roll caneryward in carload lots there will be more women workers needed. There is work to do---work for everyone. Labor isn't any fly in the fruit. The real "terrors" in the cannery are prices of sugar and "shook!" Both necessary---and both going steadily up hand-in-hand. Where sugar used to be $4.00 a bag it is now $9.00! "Nevertheless" said Mr Barthold, "there's lots of sugar and there's plent of cans and there's always help enough and there's money in the world---we are going to have a big year!"

The George Herbert cannery still exists on the southeast corner of Third and Keyes in San Jose. Although the current occupants probably don't spell WELCOME with capital letters, you're certainly welcome to drive by and stare out the window or view the building on Google Street View.

In addition to serving as San Jose's library for a good twenty years, Edith Daley also published the War History of Santa Clara County about World War I as well as M"The Angel in the Sun", a book of poetry with no cannery content whatsoever.

Places I Won't Model IV: The Winchester House

One of the problems of being into model railroading as an outlet for a frustrated architect or architectural historian is that there's plenty of buildings that would be fun to treat as models, but won't fit on my model railroad.

I mean, if I'm modeling the Santa Clara Valley, how can I not want to build a model of the Winchester Mystery House?

I thought about this as I took on my self-appointed position as Edith Daley Fan Club president, for Edith published a two-part story on Sarah Winchester's house just after Sarah's death.

"That combination of sensations marked my first close-up impression of the Winchester place, or all [of the] Winchester place that could be seen by standing on the narrow cement sidewalk outside the grounds, with an inquisitive and unapologetic nose almost giving an Eskimo salutation to the cold iron of the elaborately grilled iron gate which was securely barred. Entrance gate, through which no one, unless 'on business', might enter.

Listening to the sounds of carpentry, sniffing at the odor of paint, one remembered a thing of common report: that the rich Mrs. Winchester who lives in this mysterious house with locked gates, is said to believe that when she stops building… she will die!"

Looks like those myths about Sarah's reasons for building aren't just a modern myth.

Edith's stories ran in the September 18 and September 19, 1922 San Jose Evening News, for those of you relentlessly consuming all of Edith's works.

Edith was a big deal for the Evening News. She also had her fiction published in the newspaper, but her adjective-laden reporting was probably what kept the paychecks coming. For example, consider Edith's reporting on William Hightower's murder trial for killing Rev. Father Patrick Heslin from Colma in the October 14, 1921 Evening News:

And "District Attorney Swart had a lot to say about that machine and the fact that Hightower confesses to having experimented with this rotary machine gun and poison gas. 'No good citizen', said Swart, 'will be experimenting with such things." ... The defense attorney explained "that the Chinaman who invented gunpowder was probably an inoffensive tea-drinking Oriental pursuing his experiments on the banks of a Chinese river --- without a thought of blowing up his countrymen!"

Hightower got life, BTW. His "dream girl", Peggy Curtis True, attempted to reach him when the verdict was read, but the guards held her back. Stories like this convince me we need to return to those happier and simpler days of traditional values when men experimented with machine guns and poison gas.

[Edith Daley hasn't written anything on the Southern Pacific that I've found, but I'll forgive her for that. The Winchester Mystery House still exists and is open for tours, but never had rail service and won't ever appear on my model railroad. Picture cribbed from the Wikipedia article on the Winchester Mystery House.]