Did WP run any trains to the Oakland Mole in the 50's (I'm allowing a wide time-frame here .. 45 - 58) other than the CZ and the Zephyrette? If so - would anyone have a conveniently scanned timetable? <g> Thanks in advance - I appreciate any assistance. I'm constructing a model of the mole and want to include as much of the operational variety that existed there as possible. To that end, was there any traffic there other than SP, the UP COSF and the WP in that era? It's hard to track this down - books and articles these days tend to be written from the perspective of fans of one road, and the other roads get little mention. Phil
Oakland Terminal Railroad may have been around then. They did operate with steam at one time. Not sure about them operating on the mole but very nearby.
ATSF would be the other one to look at. They had ferry slips in Richmond and San Francisco. Googling "ATSF Oakland mole" reveals this tidbit of info... Re: (rshsdepot) Santa Fe Station in Oakland No definite info regarding if ATSF used the mole in your period, but it seems possible. Gosh, if there's no good book about the Mole, there ought to be one.
John / Ben - thanks for the info. 16th Street Station got some Santa Fe traffic (and they had a ferry slip & station north of the SP mole), and there was a whole WP yard & they had their own "mole" with frerry slips just south of the SP mole. However, I'm trying to do a high fidelity model of the SP mole itself, so I'm being very specific. Ben - if there is a book specific to the SP mole, I haven't found it. There is excellent coverage in John Signor's "SP's Western Divison" book, but it is very SP-centric (with some discussion of the red trains). I have great coverage now of the SP side, with lots of help from SP fans. The Mole is a wonderful subject for modelling. The more I learn, the more enthusiastic I become. Passenger operations are not heavily modelled in the USA from what I can see, but the mole operations have so much potential, especially as I expand the layout later and add the coach yard, the SP freight slips and the SP engine service facilities. And with quality N scale models of the daylights (with some allowance for the differences between the SJD and the MD), the Zephyr and the Zephyrette (also from Kato), plus a reasonable stand in for the COSF (albeit without a credible E2), I can do a really good representation. I just want to do justice to the roads other than SP that used the Mole (and it makes operations even better! Again, thanks.
Did a Google search of "southern pacific mole" & got 266 hits. Other variations of that should get you even more places. There's one site w/ interior pix from postcards in the steam era. Several sites have aerial photos of the Mole thru time.
The CZ did not begin operations until 1949, and sometime in the late 1950's and Early 1960s stopped using the mole altogether. The CZ replaced the Exposition Flyer. WP also ran aother train from Oakland to Portola CA called the Feather River express, but I believe this died with the CZ's birth. WP's other train at the time was the pedestrian Royal Gorge. The Royal Gorge was replaced in 1950 by the Zephyrettes which ran for only ten years. For actual time tables see... Western Pacific Timetables
Fantastic - exactly the information I was looking for! Thanks! This gives me a lot of leads for further investigation. Since I'm in Australia, I'm modelling operations for flavour rather than precision, so my timeframe is quite wide (1945-mid 1950's or so). So this helps a lot! Not too many people are going to know much about the prototype at all, so I'm measuring effectiveness by how well it communicates the rail scene at the Mole. If people 'get it' then I know that I've 'got it'!
As mentioned the WP's California Zephyr and Zephyrettes used SP's Oakland Mole in the 1950's. In the 1960's the Cal Zee used the street at third and Washington in Oakland as a platform until the end of passenger service in March of 1970. Santa Fe never used SP's Oakland Mole at all as their trains went to Richmond and terminated there. Espee had an extensive ferry system on San Francisco Bay until 1958 and the connection between SF and Oakland was between the Ferry Building and the Oakland Mole. A bus was used between Third and Townsend in SF and the 16th Street station in Oakland when the Mole was abandon.
If you have not seen these already check this out, Southern Pacific's Oakland Pier through the 20th Century About halfway or so down there are a collection of old postcards Postcards of Alameda, CA Page 3 of 7 The mole in N scale! ATSF_Arizona at Chantilly - Layout Tour: Pliny Holt pictures from trains photos on webshots :mconfused:
One thing that I saw you mention in your original post was calling the CofSF a UP train. It was jointly operated by the SP, UP and C&NW. In the time frame you are looking at, it was powered by more than just the E-2s, and as I recall, most of the time it was the Alco PA's. Luckily, Kato just happened to re-release these in SP Daylight. A famous example of the CofSF being pulled by PA's would be the famous trapped Streamliner on Donner Pass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_San_Francisco http://cprr.org/Museum/Stranded_Streamliner_1952/index.html Hope these help...
Charger & Andrew .. thanks. Charger - I've seen the site you mention, but I didn't know about Pliny's layout. I need to chase him down, for sure, probably through the NMRA, and I'll have to get the NSR backissue with his layout in it. Thanks for that! Andrew - you are, of course, right about the COSF. I guess the colours caused my comment (always alliterate when available! . Cheers!
