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And now for another game of Model Railroad Sudoku, where we leaf through a railroad employee’s time book and try to piece together what a worker's job was like. As a reminder, railroad employees used these time books - little notebooks often handed out for free by insurance men or other businesses - to record the trains they worked and the expected pay, giving them a way to double-check the railroad’s records at the end of the month. Most time books included columns for dates, where the train came from and went to, times, pay, and names of the foreman they worked for.
This time, we’ll check out a time book collected and scanned by John Signor and available by the grace of Ed Gibson, proprietor of wx4.org, also known as the Dome of Foam.
Here's the time book so you can play along, or look at some of the raw data on a Google Spreadsheet.
I’m interested in this time book in hopes of learning something about the Southern Pacific in San Jose - Ed describes the time book as the 1920’s era, and various hints made me think that the employee, Vernon Frasier, was an SP employee.
Let’s see if we can learn anything useful! For those of you playing along at home, I’ll make sure to prompt with a rough area of questioning before going into my own guesses; feel free to dive into the time book, see what you discover, and compare your observations against mine.
Question 1: Is the time book for an SP employee? When’s it from, and what area?
Now, Ed describes the time book as circa 1925 and for “Vernon Frazier” (though the scanned book doesn’t actually show a page with his name so we can’t be certain of the name spelling.) If you look in the time book, you’ll see occasional month names on the top of pages - showing that this time book was filled out in December 1928 and later months. The ads at the top are mostly for San Jose, Watsonville, and Pacific Grove businesses, seriously hinting at someone working in the local area, suggesting an SP employee. We don’t have any proof yet that he was an SP engineer, nor definitive proof of where.
Question 2: How did Mr Fraser fill in columns in the time book?
The prepared columns don’t quite match the numbers written in. Date and engine number look sane (at least for the SP), but the train number appears to have a departure time, “called for” has various numbers and X’s, “left at” isn’t close to the call time, initial delay is always a number or an X, station has just numbers, and arrived at has obvious dollar signs.
The engine number looks like SP steam engine numbers - Mr. Frazier was driving Consolidations (2727, 2670), 4-8-0s (2814), and a bunch of 4-8-2s (3650, 3638, etc). It looks like he worked on the road, and must have been an engineer or fireman. The first time (in the train number column) makes sense as a start time; let’s see if everything else makes sense.
The “called for” has various numbers -73, 1-75, 75, 77, and 71 and X - perhaps train numbers? Straight numbers like 73 likely indicate train 73 (probably a northbound Los Angeles - San Francisco passenger train), numbers with a dash indicate which section of a train run in multiple parts (1-75 is first section of train 75), and X probably indicates an “extra” train not listed in a timetable.
The “left at” column appears to have times, and most are several hours after the time in “train number”. Let’s assume this is the time he stopped work.
The “Initial delay” shows some other numbers and Xs: 76, 2-102, 330. These look very much like train numbers, especially since they look very similar to the “called for” outbound train numbers. Halfway through the time book, he stops noting these as all.
The “station no.” column is numbers, ranging from 100 (several instances) to 208. The minimum value of 100 matches the railroad rule that a road crew gets paid in 100 mile days. The 100s could represent days where Mr. Frazier didn’t travel far, and larger numbers represent longer days.
The “arrived at” column has dollar values; larger values match longer miles in the previous column, confirming that these columns are probably miles and pay.
The final column, on the second page, lists last names, and we can guess these are the foreman, engineer, or fireman.
Question 3: What’s with those train numbers?
Now, the train numbers don’t look at all familiar. 1950’s timetables don’t show appropriate trains. However, the 1920’s timetables do make sense - see Coast Division employee timetable #126 from 1927, for example.
- Train 69/70 was the Coaster
- Train 71/72 was the Daylight
- Train 73/74 was the Padre, which later became the Oakland Daylight
- Train 75/76 was the Lark
- Train 77/78 was the Shoreline
- Train 101/102 was the Sunset Limited - San Francisco to New Orleans.
- Train 243/244 was the Sunset Manifest.
- Train 330 was Freight
That’s impressive! The odd numbers are always north-bound towards San Francisco (railroad westbound), and even always south-bound towards Los Angeles (railroad eastbound.)
Here’s an excerpt of the 1928 timetable:
The times for the scheduled trains (especially the passenger trains) seem to imply Mr. Frazier is working out of San Luis Obispo - the starting times usually coincide with the departure of the first train number from San Luis Obispo, suggesting he's starting work in San Luis Obispo.
Why does he include two train numbers on all his runs? That probably means that he's going out and back. All are odd in first columns and even in second columns, suggesting he’s going west out of San Luis Obispo towards Watsonville Junction, and always returning to San Luis Obispo. Maybe he went other directions on some of the extra trips, but there’s really no sign of him going eastbound from SLO.
The X’s could indicate actual extra freights or light engine movements. Xs out of San Luis Obispo (assuming they're westbound) and are likely to be actual extra trains if only because it would be unlikely to send a helper up Cuesta without a train - that's the direction that most needs the help! There are some cases where there are Xs in both directions, again suggesting some of these are actually extra freights rather than engine movements.
Vernon’s work also changes during the year. During the winter, he operates a mix of numbered and extra trains out of San Luis Obispo always northbound, but on March 9, he starts repeatedly working the Daylight Limited (71/72). The start and end times also start matching up with times both westbound and eastbound, and with longer (230) mile days suggesting longer mainline runs.
Question 4: What more do we know if we assume he is working in San Luis Obispo?
Now that we know he was working out of San Luis Obispo, we can start checking additional sources for background on Mr. Frazier: census records (for information about him) and published railroad seniority lists (for his career and the careers of his coworkers). He might live in San Luis Obispo or in one of the other towns. Is there anyone with the name Frazier near San Luis Obispo?
With some quick searching, ancestry.com does has some information on him from census records, though with a different spelling. In the 1930 census, Vernon Fraser is 34 years old, Locomotive Engineer, born in California, married 10 years to Ruby Fraser, son Gordon and daughter Eugenia, and living at 329 Santa Barbara Ave. near the SP depot. (Full Ancestry census page here).
Railroad seniority lists are also a great source for checking on Vernon's career. These lists were important to railroaders to understand the pecking order for bidding on jobs, but they'll also give us details on when Vernon started and gives us a way to guess at those other names in the time book and confirm their particular trade and seniority level.
A 1929 seniority roster (also from the Dome of Foam) showed “Fraser, VW” (not the same spelling as Ed gave) qualified as engineer Sept. 1, 1926. So he was an engineer at this point with three years of seniority.
However, looking at the paired up names on the time book, the names all match engineers: Deffenbach and Umbertis (qualified as engineers in 1920), Nevins, McGaha, Dutcher, Fisk, etc. Either Vernon Frazier was actually working as a fireman (but doesn’t appear in the lists), or Vernon Fraser was bidding on fireman jobs even though he was qualified as an engineer, or the engineer listed in the time book might be the engineer for the train he was helping.
Question 5: Where could Vernon Frazier have been operating those trains?
If we pencil out the train schedules:
The call times mostly match up with the departure of the northbound trains, and the end times match the arrival of the southbound trains with arrival in San Luis Obispo. It looks like we’ve got the time book of an engineer operating north out of SLO. He also doesn’t appear to go all the way to Watsonville Junction which appears strange - to get back in time, he would have to part ways with the train somewhere between SLO and Watsonville Junction. Now, we know there’s a big hill - Cuesta Grade - north of SLO. Could Mr. Frazier be operating helpers?
The engine numbers hint at that - at least some of his runs on first and second class trains are on 2-8-0s, which definitely don’t seem like motive power for named trains going up Cuesta. Even when he’s on a 4-8-2, the runs are shorter, suggesting he couldn’t have made it all the way to San Ardo or Watsonville Junction and back.
(How do we know whether he was working on helpers, rather than working on mainline trains? If he was enginer for the mainline trains, I'd assume he would show mileage that better matched running halfway or all the way through a division - I'll go through that a bit more later.)
| Train | SJC | Watsonville | San Ardo | SLO | Surf |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 7:00a | 5:35a | 3:30a | 12:42a | 11:15p |
| 102 | 7:30p | 9:00p | 10:56p | 1:25a | 3:08a |
| 71 | 6:40p | 5:17p | 3:33p | 1:33p | 12:18p |
| 72 | 8:47a | 10:06a | 11:50a | 1:53p | 3:07p |
| 69 | 9:23a | 7:50a | 5:46a | 3:12a | 1:36a |
| 70 | 10:22p | 11:55p | 1:56a | 4:35a | 6:14a |
| 73 | 7:40a | 6:10a | 4:09a | 1:48a | 12:30a |
| 74 | 10:07p | 11:26p | 1:10a | 3:25a | 4:43a |
| 75 | 8:19a | 6:37a | 4:41a | 2:15a | 12:53a |
| 76 | 9:04p | 10:23p | 12:12a | 2:45a | 4:10a |
| 77 | 9:32p | 7:57p | 5:33p | 3:05p | 1:21p |
| 78 | 9:05p | 10:40a | 1:06p | 3:40p | 5:18p |
| 243 | 11:00p | 4:50p | 9:00a | 11:45p | 8:55p |
| 244 | 3:15a | 7:20a | 3:33p | 10:15p | 3:08a |
| 330 | - | 10:15a | 1:24p | 6:45p | 8:55p |
If so, his typical day is help a train north over Cuesta Grade, cut off somewhere at Santa Margarita, and return. The miles suggest the distance he travelled (unless he did multiple round trips). 100 miles were up and back. It’s only 16 miles from SLO to Santa Margarita, so he could have made it to Paso Robles or San Miguel and back on 100 miles. But that doesn’t quite match because of the precise mileage. More importantly, Santa Margarita has the only wye north of San Luis Obispo according to the employee timetable, and there's no turntable in the area, so there would be no other place to turn an engine. Assuming a single helper run up and down does imply a lot of time waiting. For example, on December 30, 1928, Mr. Frazier starts off in San Luis Obispo at 1:13 PM, 30 minutes before the arrival of the Daylight. He took the 71 north, took the 102 south, and arrived home at 1:35 am after 182 miles - one of his longer days. Now, a 91 mile trip would only have gotten him to King City, arriving at 3:50 pm, but catching the southbound Sunset Limited at 10:30 pm. That seems like an awfully long pause in the middle of his day.
It's worth noting that the timetable only has 7-8 scheduled (non-extra) trains a day in each direction, mostly clustered in the same times. Westbound trains towards San Francisco were often passing through between 3-5 am and 3-5 pm (morning and evening departures from Los Angeles) while eastbound trains were between 10pm-1am and 10am-3pm (evening and morning departures from San Francisco). That’s awkward for crews based in San Luis Obispo where a departure at 3pm on a numbered train may mean getting stuck at Santa Margarita for several hours until the late night rush arrives eastbound.
It would be nice to know how many extra trains came through San Luis Obispo, but that's hard without dispatcher's timesheets.
I’m more willing to believe that Mr. Frazier led multiple trains, going SLO to Santa Margarita at 1:30. He could have taken the Shore Line south at 2:44 pm, or 330 freight south at 4:08 pm, arriving in San Luis Obispo between 4:00 and 6:00 pm. There’s no good scheduled trains between 6pm and midnight - maybe he could have taken an extra - but he would have needed to be in Santa Margarita at 12:15 am to catch the train back. That’s still less than 100 miles.
100 miles is the minimum mileage for a day's work, so the 100 mile days probably just didn't involve much movement.
Different days had different mileages. November 30, 1928 had up on 77, back on 102 for 182 miles, but Dec. 2 had him up on 77 and back on 102 for 151 miles. There’s other days he’s back on an extra (4 hours, 100 miles) or train 244, the Sunset Manifest.
What about the distributions in mileage? I looked at 37 days of work for Mr. Fraser. 21 of the days were 100 mile days, and all were less than 8 hours of work. The rest of the days had unique or two-occurence mileages from 112 miles to 216 miles. Mileage also correlated strongly with hours of service: a 112 mile day was 8h35m, 116 miles was 8h50m, 126 miles was 9h25m, 134 miles was 9h25m. It definitely feels less like Vernon was getting paid for the actual mileage he worked (where I would have expected a lot of repeated miles), but instead getting paid by hours worked getting converted into a mileage. $6.23 for a 100 mile day plus 6c a mile seems to be a close but not exact conversion.
Let’s try thinking through a different scenario. On December 30, 1928, Mr. Frazier gets called at 1:13 pm at SLO, acts as helper the Daylight at 1:43 pm, and takes it as far as Santa Margarita (17 miles), breaking off the helper around 2:30pm, and catching the Sunset Manifest, train 244 at 4:45 pm. He returns to SLO at 7:25 pm, catches an extra, and meets the Sunset Limited at Santa Margarita at 12:15am. He got paid $11.34 for this 12 hour and 22 minute day which got recorded as 182 miles - much less than four trips to Santa Margarita (4 x 17 miles = 68 milees).
So from just this information, I think we’ve got it figured out:
- This is a time book for an SP engineer, Vernon Fraser.
- It records his work between December 1928 and mid-1929.
- He's mostly handling helpers out of San Luis Obispo.
- He probably did short trips, and had to wait at the top of Cuesta to pair up with a train headed down, or with multiple trips that aren’t fully detailed.
- He was working near daily, even with only a few years of seniority. If I was more curious, I'd check later censuses to see
- He was mostly paid on hours work (converted into miles).
- He may have done 1-2 helper runs a day, and had lots of idle tiome waiting for the next train
How does that match what you saw in the time book, and what further information would you want to examine?
