Ops on R Street (Circa 1958)

The City of Sacramento commissioned a number of traffic studies through the years, and for a railroad history enthusiast they can be an information boon. For example, there was a 1958 era study that sent researchers out to ride with all the engine crews that performed switching operations in the city.

Below is what I've distilled from that study for the crews that worked the R Street area for the different railroads at different times of the day. It's an interesting record and the study describes a lot more rail activity than I would have guessed.

I've created some graphics that I've used in the last couple of PowerPoint presentations I've given on R Street (most recently at the Bay Area Layout Design & Operations Weekend series of clinics held at California Railroad Museum on January 30th), that simplify the tracks and city streets down to something like a board game map. It's tough to get into the fine details about each switch job in the city during a Powerpoint as it's pretty dry stuff for most folks not intimately interested in R Street rail history (and even then...). But here on the blog, you can safely fall asleep and come back later for more :-).  After each graphic I'll list out the information given for each "Engine Assignment" as given in the traffic study. It was a lot of typing, so if anything looks off, feel free to drop me a line, or leave a comment, so I can check the original copy.

All jobs below were handled by yard crews, and for each rail company the tracks on R Street (and much of the city) were under Yard Limits rules. That is they were operating under a specific rule given in all railroad rule books.(I'm assuming... certainly every rule book I've seen.)  Under this rule crews only had to protect against 1st class trains (non existent on R Street itself, after maybe 1927, but the WP mainline cutting through town would have had 1st class trains the WP and SN crews would have had to worry about, as well as any SP crew crossing the WP main on R Street between 19th and 20th Streets). The other element to the yard limits rule is Restricted Speed. Specifically crews had to keep their speeds down so that they would be able to stop at half the distance to the range of vision - but under no circumstance could they go more than 20 mph.

The engine assignment numbers in the listings from this study I think were internal company job designations and didn't relate to specific locomotives.

I'm going to present the jobs in order of time of day, starting at midnight. This is a little different than how the traffic study presented them, so you'll see some 'follows the previous assignment's route' verbiage in the first set of jobs that ran between midnight to 8:00 am.

I've included the Sacramento Northern jobs that were in the area mostly for color. They didn't have any specific duties on R Street itself, but during this era they would have had trackage rights on the WP parts of R Street (and the Q/R Alley) and could have conceivably been seen making their way from one part of town to the other via R.

Central California Traction had no yard forces in town and all switching in town by them was by road crews. As far as I can tell there was no Central California Traction presence on R Street with the exception of their name on the WP freight house at 3rd and R.

We'll start with an area map circa 1927, not from the study, that shows the interchange points  mentioned in the study- I've noted in Red the reporting points or yards mentioned in the study. I have to admit I'm guessing on the location of the SN yard in West Sacramento (West Side Yard). Everything off of R Street and certainly once you cross the river quickly turns into the 'Here be Dragons' notations on the railroad maps in my mind. (The password is 'myopic')

SN Engine Assignment No. 141
Time Shift 12:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. (daily)
Reporting Point - Varies: West Side Yard; 2d and M Streets; or 17th and D Streets.

Duties- Usually leaves reporting point a few minutes after 12:00 P.M. and ties up between 7:30 A.M. and 9:00 AM at the nearest reporting point. Switches the entire system from West Side Yard to Haggin Yard and X Street from the Central California Traction Company - Southern Pacific interchange to The Western Pacific interchange at 19th and X Streets. Generally switches to and from eight different spurs and sidings, moving 75 cars, including 24 cars to and from the above-named interchanges. Crosses the Sacramento River between two and four times each shift.

SP Engine Assignment No. 636
Time Shift 12:00 P.M to 8:00 A.M. (daily)
Report Point- Generally in the area of Brighton Junction where the preceding shift has tied up.

Duties - Ordinarily begins work a few minutes after 12:00 P.M. and arrives at main yard between 4:30 A.M and 5:30 A.M. The preceding crew is usually able to complete only the switching assignments in the outbound direction. This assignment covers the same area, but in the opposite direction. Brighton Junction to the main yard via R Street. Generally moves about 70 cars to and from 12 spurs and sidings, including an average of 20 cars to and from The Western Pacific Railroad interchange at 4th and R Streets.

SP Engine Assignment No. 641
Time Shift- 12:00 P.M. to 8:00 AM (daily)
Reporting Point- Southern Pacific Main Yard

Duties- Generally leaves the yard about 2:00 A.M., following about two hours of switching. Returns about 5:45 A.M. with from 15 to 20 cars, completing the shift in the yard. Switches the lower end of R Street, along the Sacramento River Levee to the various oil plants, and the industrial area located south of Y Street (Broadway) between Front and 5th Streets. During these operations, switches the Sacramento Northern-Central California Traction interchange on X Street and The Western Pacific Railroad interchange on R Street. Usually switches about 14 spurs and sidings and moves an average of 50 cars, including 25 cars to and from the interchanges.

WP Engine Assignment No. 32
Time Shift- 12:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M (daily)
Reporting Point- Western Pacific Main Yard

Duties- Follows the pattern of Assignments Nos. 13 and 22, except that there is generally less switching time in the yard. Usually moves about 60 cars to and from 15 spurs and sidings, including an average of 35 cars to and from the four interchanges.

SN Engine Assignment No. 31
Time Shift- 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 PM (daily)
Reporting Point - Varies: West Side Yard; 2d and M Streets: or 17th and D Streets.

Duties- Generally leaves reporting point between 8:30 A.M. and 9:30 A.M returning to one of the three points about 4:00 P.M. Switches all spurs and sidings on Front Street, X Street, from Front Street to 19th Street, Libby-McNeil and Libby on Alhambra Avenue, the Haggin Yard, the West Side Yard, and all interchange tracks. Makes an occasional trip to Woodland. Usually moves about 70 cars each day to and from 10 to 15 spurs and sidings, including and average of 14 cars to and from the following interchange tracks: The Western Pacific Railroad at Frong Street between P and Q Streets; Southern Pacific-Central California Traction at Front and X Streets; and The Western Pacific-Central California Traction at 19th and X Streets. Crosses the Sacramento River from two to four times each shift.

SN Engine Assignment No. 32
Time Shift- 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point -Same as Assignment No. 31

Duties- Same as Assignment No. 31 but in opposite direction. Generally starts switching about 8:30 A.M. and ties up about 4:00 P.M. Generally moves about 70 cars to and from an average of 10 spurs and sidings, including an average of 15 cars to and from those interchanges: The Western Pacific Railroad at Front Street between P and Q Streets; Southern Pacific-Central California Traction at Front and X Steets; and The Western Pacific-Central California Traction at 19th and X Streets. Crosses the Sacramento River between three and four times during each shift.

SP Engine Assignment - No Number (***)
Time Shift - 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point - Southern Pacific Main Yard

Duties- Usually works in the yard for about one hour before leaving. Leaves with from 10 to 20 cars to switch industrial tracks on Front Street, the lower end of R Street, and along the levee to the industrial area south of Y Street (Broadway) between Front and 5th Streets. Switches The Western Pacific Railroad interchange at R and 4th Streets and Sacramento Northern-Central California Traction interchange at Front and X Streets, moving about 36 cars to and from the interchange. Returns to the yard about mid-shift to deliver and pick up, and completes the shift about 3:50 P.M, returning to the yard with from 12 to 20 cars. The switching movements ordinarily require the moving of about 70 cars to and from 17 spurs and sidings, including the interchange movements.

SP Engine Assignment No. 635
Time Shift 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point- Southern Pacific Main Yard

Duties- Leaves the yard between 8:00 A.M. and 10:30 A.M., depending upon the amount of work in the yard, and returns between 3:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. Generally leaves with about 10 cars. Switches the industrial tracks along R Street from Front Street to Brighton Junction. Occasionally switches the line along the Sacramento River Levee. On the days when this is done this assignment also switches  the Sacramento Northern-Central California Traction interchange at Front and X Streets and the The Western Pacific interchange on R Street between 4th and 7th Streets. The switching ordinarily involves the moving of about 53 cars to and from an average of 11 different spurs and sidings, including an interchange movement of about 30 cars.

WP Engine Assignment No. 13
Time Shift - 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M (daily)
Reporting Point- Western Pacific Main Yard

Duties- Generally leaves yard about 9:00 A.M. with 15 cars and returns about 3:30 P.M. with an equal number. Switches all industries north and south along 19th Street. and west along R Street to Front Street, including Sacramento Northern transfer tracks (receiving only) at Front Street, Southern Pacific interchange tracks at R and 4th Streets, Sacramento Northern-Central California Traction interchange tracks at 19th and X Streets, and the Sacramento Northern interchange at Haggin Yard. Returns to the yard twice during the shift to deliver and pick up. Ordinarily switches about 65 cars to and from 11 spurs and sidings, including an average of 15 cars to and from the four interchanges.

SN Engine Assignment - No. 143
Time Shift- 4:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M (daily
Reporting Point- Varies: West Side Yard or 2d and M Streets.

Duties- Switches the entire system. Generally leaves the reporting point about 4:15 P.M. and ties up at one of the two reporting points between 11:30 P.M. and 12:00 PM. Usually switches to and from 12 spurs and sidings, moving about 60 cars, including 10 cars to and from the interchanges with The Western Pacific Railroad at Front and P Streets, the Southern Pacific-Central California Traction at Front and X Streets, and The Western Pacific-Central California Traction at 19th and X Streets. Crosses the Sacramento River between two and four times each shift.

SN Engine Assignment -No. 144
Time Shift- 4:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point - Varies: West Side Yard; or 2d and M Streets.

Duties- Generally switches in yard for about one hour before starting to switch industrial tracks. Switches industries on est side of river and makes a daily trip to Woodland. Ordinarily switches only along Front Street to X Street, on the east side of  the river, including the interchanges with The Western Pacific at Front and P Street, and with Southern Pacific and Central California Traction at Front and X Streets. The switching is usually to and from four different spurs and sidings, moving about 25 cars, including an average of 15 cars to and from the above-named interchanges. Generally crosses the Sacramento River twice during each shift, but three or four times if starting from or tying up at 2d and M Streets yard.

SP Engine Assignment- No. 633
Time Shift- 4:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point - Southern Pacific Main Yard

Duties - Generally works in yard on switching assignments for from two to four hours and leaves yard with an average of four cars; switches industries along Front Street to R Street, along R Street. Front to 5th Streets, and along the Sacramento River Levee, south, to the Standard Oil Company's plant on Y street (Broadway). Serves the Sacramento Northern-Central California Traction Interchange at Front and X Streets and The Western Pacific Railroad interchange at Front and X Streets and the The Western Pacific Railroad interchange at R and 4th Streets. The interchange movements average about 26 cars per day for this shift, and the switching movements require the moving of an average of 40 cars to and from 11 different spurs and sidings. It is the usual practice for the crew to return to the yard once during the shift to deliver and pick up. The work away from the yard is usually completed by 9:30 P.M and the shift is completed by switching in the main yard.

SP Engine Assignment - No. 636
Time Shift- 4:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M. (daily)
Report Point - Southern Pacific Main Yard.

Duties - Leaves the yard about 5:30 P.M. with from 10 to 20 cars and generally ties up in the vicinity of Brighton Junction at the completion of the shift. Switches the industrial tracks along R Street. Occasionally switches The Western Pacific Railroad interchange at R and 4th Streets. The switching along R Street usually requires the moving of about 50 cars to and from an average of 14 different spurs and sidings.

WP Engine Assignment - No. 22
Time Shift - 4:00 P.M. to 12:00 P.M. (daily)
Reporting Point - Western Pacific Main Yard

Duties - Generally works in yard for about one hour before starting to switch industrial tracks along The Western Pacific main line, west along R Street, and 19th Street to Front Street. Also works all interchange tracks. Follows the pattern of Assignment No. 13. Usually switches between 60 and 70 cars to and from 11 spurs and sidings, including an average of 28 cars to and from the four interchanges.

Thomson-Diggs Billhead

A few months ago, I purchased an eBay offering of a Thomson Diggs bill-head from 1924; they seem to crop up fairly regularly. The bill-head includes an illustration of the original portion of the Thomson Diggs building on R Street. The current building is much bigger than this early nucleus. It later included a first floor expansion on the West side (to the right of the building in the illustration) and then later still additional floors were added on top of that expansion. This illustration was one Thomson Diggs used in their 1920s catalogs that I've seen down at the Center for Sacramento History. Also of note is warehouse to the left of the main building. I think either this is an earlier and smaller version of the warehouse that I've seen later pictures of, or the picture is keeping this corrugated warehouse shorter than it was in reality. Perhaps this was done on purpose to not block the view of the main building.

The Arch and the Power Poles

The Arch - at 10th and R.

One of the new obelisks on R.

R Street redevelopment continues with some recent streetscape improvements. On the 19th of January, the first phase of these improvements were officially celebrated with the lighting of the new arch. FUEL Creative Group, designers of the street arch, a smaller pedestrian arch and stand alone obelisks, drew on the industrial history of the street for inspiration. When they scouted present day R Street, they found a couple of aged metal power poles and used them as a design element.

The poles, one at 8th street and another at 21st street, have long intrigued me. They are of a latticed metal construction and certainly have an industrial flavor to them.

In my photo collection of R Street, they pop up in the background in various places. The earliest photos I have date from the mid 1930s, and they were present back then. Even in those early photos, the pole line they are a part of is mostly made up of a wooden poles. But it is evident that there were more metal poles in the past than the two survivors we have today. Interestingly, nowhere in the photos I've studied is there evidence of them further west than 8th street. And this leads me to a theory.

I speculate that the poles date back to 1908 when the Great Western Power Company built a pole line from Brighton to a power house at 8th and R Streets.

The pole at 21st and R as it looks in 2012.
It's only about 2/3rds its original height. 
That's the old Bekins Building in the background   

Around 1908, Great Western built a power house at 8th and R Streets in its bid to compete with PG&E in Sacramento - especially for industrial customers as could be found along R Street. Great Western had a big hydroelectric plant at Big Bend on the Feather River that was the largest hydroelectric operation west of the Mississippi at the time*. The company transmitted 60,000 volts** on a high tension line from Big Bend to a substation at Brighton (Folsom and Power Inn Rd) on its way to Oakland. At Brighton a smaller feeder line came into Sacramento to the power house at 8th and R Streets. According to a historical survey sheet prepared by the State of California Department of Parks and Recreation, the 'building received 22,000 volts from Brighton and transformed it to 2300 volts for urban use'.

The power house at 8th and R from a 1912 issue of Electrical World.

Great Western Power was acquired by PG&E circa 1930 and the publicly owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) took over the electrical grid after a long and contentious fight on the evening of the last day of 1946. The building was in use up to at least the early 1980s but has since been torn down.

I'm reasonably certain the metal power poles were headed to the power house and their job was to transmit power from Brighton - I just would like to find some documentation that they date all the way back to 1908 or at least back to the Great Western days.

I do plan on modeling at least one of these poles for one of the modules or the home layout at some point. If done well they would make a striking model.

I'm glad FUEL Creative based part of their design on these old poles. They are very likely artifacts that have been a part of the long and interesting history of electricity in Sacramento.


* photo caption next to page 199 in PG&E the Centennial History of the Pacific Gas and Electric
 **  ibid p. 223 upgraded to 100,000 volts in 1909,

Sacramento Archives Crawl and Carlaw's Headstones

This past Saturday, October 1st, I took part in the first ever Sacramento Archives Crawl. Four local archive locations made up the crawl with exhibits of rarely seen artifacts and tours of some of their non-public facilities. I received my 'passport' at the first location I visited (I chose the Center for Sacramento History since I think of that as my 'home' archive location).  Each archive stamped my passport marking my journey through the crawl. To intrepid history fans that visited three of the four locations a prize, in the form of special Buffalo Brewery coasters, was awarded. Since Buffalo Brewery was located on R Street (now the site of the Sacramento Bee building and just torn down by my modeling era) this was something of a quest for me.


Several other participating archives had a presence and it was fun mingling. The Old City Cemetery Committee had a table at the California State Archives which reminded me to take another stab at finding the Carlaw family plot. I had tried a couple times before and had struck out miserably. Today however, I enlisted the help of the friendly volunteers there who steered me to the correct location.

I've been curious for some time how the gravestones for a family of gravestone cutters would look. The last of the Carlaws, Jack Carlaw, was interviewed in the 1930s mourning the trend away from fancy headstones to the point where he thought the artistry of his craft was no longer needed. But, their own family headstones are straight-forward and functional, without much artistic embellishment.  I guess that old line about shoe makers' families could apply to stone cutters as well.

Car Loading Data for Valley Wholesale Grocery

One of the nice things about conventions (I survived and my module made it to the show thankyouverymuch) is that you often get to catch up with friends you don't get to hang out with frequently enough. The genial proprietor of Robert's Vasona Branch Blog, Robert Bowdidge and I have bumped into each other at a number of events, most notably where we met, at the joint LDSIG/OPSIG meets in Santa Clara.

At x2011 West last week, Robert attended my R Street clinic where, among other things, I delve into the details of a California Railroad Commission (CRC) case.

CRC Case 4066 had as its setting my beloved R Street. It was a depression era case (1935-6) that heard the Western Pacific complaint that the Southern Pacific was not opening up a couple of customers to reciprocal switching.

In a reciprocal switching agreement two railroads serving the same switching district agree to deliver cars to customers that were brought into town by the competing railroad but whose tracks are on their own switching network for a nominal charge (in some cases the token charge is completely absorbed).  There are restrictions and limitations of course. At least part of the line haul on the way in had to be competitive, and the spotting location had to be to a private industrial spur. That is, you as a railroad could not force your competition to deliver your customers cars to your competitor's own facilities - like their Freight Houses or Team Tracks and still expect to get the über cheap rate.

And therein lay the rub. It all hung on what the definition of team track was because the SP claimed the two industries that they refused reciprocal switching service to were, in fact, team tracks.

A team track is a track made available for public unloading. It is a railroad owned track and part of their terminal facilities. For a business that does not have its own railroad spur, a team track is a way to ship goods via rail.

Unlike modern switching tariffs I've seen, the ruling tariff at the time of the case did not define what a team track was nor did it list the team track locations. Normally we as modelers think team track locations are fairly obvious from their appearance. The main team track facility for the Western Pacific looked much like the Walthers "team track scene". Others, and the two disputed spurs here, however looked identical to a regular private industrial spur. At one of the locations a double ended spur served three customers - the outer two were designated private industrial spurs and thus open to reciprocal switching, the middle was not.

What gives? The Southern Pacific claimed it came down to ownership. When a railroad right of way is already on a public street, as are many of the spurs on R Street, the determining factor of ownership is the rails themselves. The outer two customers had a lease agreement with the Southern Pacific. The middle business did not and thus SP owned the rail itself. SP designated it a team track and that was that.

Western Pacific was trying to argue a different definition of what made a team track a team track. They held that a track's definition should be based on usage. In this case they claimed the two track locations designated by the Southern Pacific as team tracks were being used as private industrial spurs. They felt that all, or at least a vast majority of cars being delivered to the spurs were cars spotted for the industries that were adjacent to the team track. In this way, the WP felt, the SP was illegally closing two businesses on R Street to the reciprocal switching agreement. The had no evidence of this, just a hunch. They managed, over strenuous objections from the SP, to have the Commission compel the SP to produce the car records for one of the disputed locations.

So, there in the case file is an exhibit that shows every car delivered to the Valley Wholesale Grocery spur for an 18 month period. It lists the car's owner,  number,  and whether the customer was the Valley Wholesale Grocery or another business.

For modelers trying to get the proper prototypical freight car mix and car frequency to a wholesale grocery business in the mid 1930s right the data is very interesting indeed.  That's where Robert comes in.  This is his era.

In a few precious entries we get the contents of the car. But others are a puzzle that Robert and I are working on.

You can help out! Check out the spreadsheet here and a little background on the spreadsheet here. You'll see our guesses at what sorts of products from the various towns and cities could possibly be. Feel free to chime in in the comments section below if you have anything to add or suggest.

Oh...in the end SP won the case. The decision simply said that the WP did not prove the tracks in question were not team tracks. It didn't explain what definition the commission was using - and the data provided by the SP showed that the tracks were being used at least a little bit of the time as truly open team tracks.

The Thomson-Diggs Catalog

     Besides people who know me and are (im)patiently waiting for some actual modeling to get done, the number one traffic driver to this site is my entry on the Thomson-Diggs Hardware Company. It's not buckets of people, but as a chunk of my blog's meager traffic it is significant.
     So I have to share a recent eBay purchase.

     I mentioned the Thomson-Diggs Company catalogs in my previous post. But I couldn't show you my pictures of them - not without paying a use fee to the Center for Sacramento History.
     I understand the need for the fee; I really do. It costs money to keep the Center going. Humidity controlled facilities, paid archival specialists and everything else that makes the Center the amazing resource that it is, isn't exactly cheap to maintain. The more budget neutral or, even better, the more money it makes for the city, the more likely the Center won't be cut out of existence. But it doesn't make much sense for me to pay a fee to post a picture for a site that gets limited traffic. So I gladly live within the rules.

     Which gets me to my purchase. I am the proud owner of a 1961 (probably) Thomson-Diggs Catalog. First thing that struck me is that T-D had a big plant in Fresno. I didn't know that. The second: 1960s kid's play structures were death traps.

The cover: fabric covered cardboard
 and 100% of your day's vitamin C allowance.

Pictures of the Sacramento and Fresno plants.

Seriously, twelve kids??? 

Floating Down the Stream of Consciousness... or how the 1861 flood got me thinking about a Russian cannon which may have saved the life of Sacramento’s surveyor.

From Page 10 - the Overland Monthly July-December 1893

Like many people, my mind wanders from time to time. I enjoy my rafting trips down the Stream of Consciousness. These historical wanderings usually start with something R Street related but they rarely end there. When my mind wanders like this, I end up Googleing things for days and buying a bunch of history books... as if I have any more room for those. This time I was thinking about how I need to get off my comfy chair and go on the Sacramento Underground Tour. And I need to do it soon too. October 31st is the last day of the year that tour will be given.

As most Sacramento history buffs will already know, the tour illustrates the period of Sacramento history where it* raised itself up from its vulnerable elevation on the flood plain in the 1860s through the 1870s.

The street raising project was a long, difficult and expensive one. The city actually voted to increase taxes because of it. The danger was so obviously clear and present that Sacramentans felt they had no choice.

Sacramento’s history is replete with many, many floods - seemingly annually in the early years. By 1861, there was a system of levees in place including the R street levee, and up until the winter of that year the city felt themselves pretty secure from flooding. The flood of 1861-62 changed all that. It was a very watery watershed moment indeed, and it featured the levee failure that served final notice that the city could not be protected by mere earthen berms alone. The delusion was specifically snapped at 16th and R Streets where the Sacramento Valley Railroad had filled in a trestle that crossed a slough as its line headed east. The wooden piles of the trestle were showing their age and the bridge was unstable. The SVRR duly received permission to fill in the bridge as a safety precaution.

At 16th street the levee left R Street and turned in a northeasterly zigzag to the American River. ** The levee turned, but the rail line kept going due east. Immediately after the levee was a slough, thus the need for a trestle.
In December 1861, the region was living through the biggest storm of the century... maybe two centuries. On December 9th, the levee on north side of town broke and the American river poured into the slough. If the trestle hadn't been filled in, the flood waters would have drained to the south where there was little town development. But because of the SVRR fill, the water backed up and over-topped the levee flooding the city proper.

There was much finger pointing - mostly at the railroad, but the result was that the street raising scheme was eventually hatched.

All this got me thinking about how and why the town was laid out where it was, which got me thinking about John A. Sutter Jr. Everyone knew him by his shortened middle name “August” and since I hate referring to him as “Junior” that’s what I’ll call him too. He had only just arrived in 1848 as the gold rush was starting and likely hadn’t experienced the routine flooding of the area. His dad, the more famous Sutter, had abandoned him for the gold fields. He gave August the crumbling empire, and the financial troubles. Thanks, dad. This left August alone with a desperate need to raise money to save his father’s finances. ***

So the idea**** of laying out a town between the river and the fort was conceived. For this, August hired brevet Captain William H. Warner on leave from the US Army Topographical Engineers to do the surveying. The town lots sold well and Sacramento City became well established on a flood plain. Commercial interests quickly became too entrenched to consider moving the town just because of a silly string of devastating floods. 

Continuing on my leisurely rafting trip down the Stream of Consciousness, I then became interested in how Captain Warner came out west in the first place. Turns out, he almost didn’t make it.

In September 1846, then 1st Lt. Warner was attached to the 1st Dragoons under General Kearny as part of the force that marched from Santa Fe for California during the Mexican-American war. The journey took six weeks, and along the way they met up with Kit Carson who told them the Mexicans in California, who thought of themselves more as Californios than Mexicans, had surrendered. On this intelligence, Kearny sent back two thirds of his troops to Santa Fe, continuing on with about 100 men.

When they arrived in California, very much the worse for wear, they found the war was far from over.

The bearer of this bad news was Marine Captain Archibald Gillespie. He had with him about 20 members of the California Volunteers- and the “Sutter Gun”.

The Sutter Gun itself has an interesting story. ***** Made in Russia during the Napoleonic wars, it was considered too small for the regular army and was given to the trading post at Fort Ross as a gift from the Tsar himself. When the Russians pulled up stakes and left in 1841, Sutter bought the fort and much of its equipment, which was whatever the Russians couldn’t take with them. This included cannons, one of which became known as ‘the Sutter Gun’- a brass 4-pounder. The cannon helped augment the defenses of Sutter’s fort and probably went a long way to enforce Sutter’s rule over his Native American work force. It was also a marvelous noise maker at parties. The purchase of Fort Ross was a major part of his debt problem by the way, but Sutter’s psychological makeup likely made it impossible for him to pass up the chance to buy cannons and military uniforms. 

During the war the Sutter gun moved around quite a bit before ending up in Los Angeles where it stayed until Gillespie took it. He had been given charge of the city, and his harsh military rule measures backfired, the town rose up, and he had to leave... “Flee” might be a better word.

Which gets us back to our engineer friend, Lt. Warner with Kearny in California in 1846. Between General Kearny and San Diego (and fresh supplies) was General Andreas Pico and his unit of about 100 Californios who were recruited from the nearby ranchos. Pico was reported to have a large number of good horses nearby.

Kearny planned for a twofer; he hoped to surprise Pico while he was camped in the Kumeyaay village of San Pasqual and, with a vigorous attack, scatter Pico’s forces leaving the route to San Diego clear. At the same time he would pick up some fresh mounts, which they could then ride into San Diego on in the style the elite 1st Dragoons deserved.

Not drawn by Warner, but the other Topographical Engineer at the battle, Lt. William Emory.

There are several excellent descriptions of the Battle of San Pasqual online, here, here, and most thoroughly, here if you want more detail- but I’ll attempt a summary.

Things went sideways from the start. The reconnaissance during the night wasn’t executed well and merely alerted the Mexicans to the American's presence. Pico’s men were well ready for the American advance on the cold, foggy morning of December 6th, 1846.

The Americans charged Pico’s men who were mounted on a line blocking the road. He had more men on foot in ravines on both flanks. The Mexicans fired a volley, killing the officer in charge of the vanguard, and then feigned a retreat. What was left of the vanguard plus the American’s main force pursued on mounts of differing quality. Some of them were on mules who had seen better days. Like, say, any day before they left from Santa Fe some one thousand miles and six weeks ago. Many of these mules clearly had not signed up for this sort of thing, and were not what you would call 'fast'.

The wide variety of mounts had the unfortunate effect of causing the American line of attack to be strung out about a mile. At this point, Pico’s men wheeled around and counter-attacked. The American’s were in danger of being rolled up piecemeal.

The weather had been very wet for days and the American’s gunpowder was not dry. This made their firearms unreliable, which meant that they were mostly reduced to using short swords (some actually rusting in their scabbards) or using their rifles as clubs. The Mexicans were armed with eight to ten foot long lances and lassos - they were also arguably among the best horsemen in the world at the time and they were on fresh horses.

The Americans did have the advantage of artillery: two ‘mountain howitzers’ pulled by mules and the aforementioned ‘Sutter Gun’. However their use was hampered by a number of critical problems. First the ammunition had not caught up with the advance of the cannons themselves. Second, there were few fire-lanes for them to shoot that wouldn’t also endanger friendly troops. And third, there was no means handy to ignite the gunpowder to fire them. At one point Lt Warner, out of desperation, fired his pistol (in vain) at one of the howitzer fuses. At another point one of the mules pulling one of the howitzers bolted, dragging it into the hands of the Californios. Understandably, they didn’t give it back.  

Really, it’s a wonder that any Americans survived the battle at all.

But it was the “Sutter Gun”, fired by Midshipman Duncan ******, that finally got a blast of grape shot off. It didn’t do any damage, but it did persuade the Californios it was about time to end the encounter. (There is some debate as to whether any cannons were fired at all, and if so, which one actually fired. But there very little other explanation as to why the Californio’s retired from the field. They were just doing too well up to that point.)

The battle then became a standoff at Mule Hill for four days until reinforcements from Commodore Stockton arrived which led to Pico’s withdrawal north.

The Sutter gun was returned to Sutter’s fort at the end of the Mexican-American war. About the time he sold the fort, Sutter gave the cannon to the California Pioneers who kept it in a museum in San Francisco. It was presumed lost in the major fires that broke out after the great earthquake in 1906.

Our surveyor Warner was wounded in three places, and was brevetted to Captain for gallantry at San Pasqual. Then again, nearly all the surviving regular army officers from that battle earned brevet promotions.

And so it was that when he surveyed Sacramento in 1848, he outranked his two assistants, both future generals, 1st Lieutenants Edward Ord and William T. Sherman. Sherman later would be an investor and vice president in the Sacramento Valley Railroad, one of several investments he was involved in while he was in California. 


The SVRR, by the way, was built atop the R Street levee which crossed a slough on a trestle that was filled in causing a... Oh crud! Now I'm caught in an eddy on the Stream of Consciousness! Quick! Throw me a line! Or better yet, go on the Sacramento Underground tour with me.






*Disclaimer: the central city section was raised; the raising did not go as far south as my beloved R Street - but there is a connection, as you’ll see.)
** See page 12 of the Sacramento County Historical society’s “Golden Notes” issue on the flood of 1861 that has the best map I’ve seen of the situation. Also, Andrew Isenberg’s Mining California: An Ecological History which tells the levee failure story well. 
***See Alberto Hurtado’s excellent John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier for more on that.
**** Influenced greatly by the future first millionaire of California, Sam Brannon.
*****see http://www.fortrossstatepark.org/stevebeck-sutterpaper.htm
****** The Battle of San Pasqual is notable for having elements of the Army, the volunteers, the Navy and the Marines.  And one of the naval officers present - Lt. Beale who also had an army commision later, had an Army Air Force Base named after him.

The Carlaw Brothers Granite and Marble Works

Lately my attention has been focused on the Carlaw Brothers buildings since they will be on the front edge of the module I’m building for the Sacramento Modular Railroaders’ layout.

John and Andrew Carlaw, two brothers from Scotland, arrived in Sacramento around 1880 and set up a granite and marble works that took up a quarter block at 10th and R. The business lasted for many decades, long enough to be there during my modeling time-frame.

As I’ve stated before, I’m trying to model things the way they looked in August 1950, but with some of the details for the Carlaw project I may have to fudge a bit. There is photographic evidence that the begging-to-be-modeled crane of theirs was no longer there by January 1950. It was definitely around at least up to 1941 however, so it’s not too much of a fudge.* Perhaps the more serious infraction of the spacetime continuum is presenting Carlaw as a rail served industry in 1950 when photos and railroad documents show their spur was not in use and likely buried or removed by the 1940s . On the other hand, they were listed as a team track customer as late as 1958. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to pretend that they still had enough rail traffic to justify keeping their delivery track, so I’m forgiving myself for imagineering a Carlaw spur in 1950. Frankly, Carlaw Brothers is just too tempting not to model with an active rail spur.

The Carlaws had their own quarries locally over in Loomis, California at least during the early part of their existence. My guess is that stones from there probably didn’t come by rail but rather hauled by wagons and trucks from fairly early on.** However the Carlaws advertised that they were importers of eastern and Scottish marble and granite. It would seem that these long distance rocks would have to come by rail probably until at least the 40s and maybe into the 50s if they were still importing that late.

Pictures archived at the Center for Sacramento History reveal that the brothers Carlaw had some great buildings to model during this period. The polishing shop, interesting in itself with its old west style false front, had an attached blacksmith shop. This bit of information*** was a particularly cool find for me. I’ve had castings of an HO scale blacksmith, his bellows and forge plus assorted blacksmith tools rattling around my spares drawer for years. The poor guy and his stuff had little hope of ever being used. Now they have a home, and at long last, my pack rattishness has a tangible payoff! Also included in that set is a LED to light up the forge. Should I dare buy a smoke unit for this too? Animation can be like a strong spice, the perfect amount turns an ok dish great- a bit too much and the meal is ruined.

There were also two open sided work-sheds in the compound. The smaller of the two had stout truss frames on the sides and housed a marble saw. The other was quite large, approximately 38 feet by 75 feet and probably protected a number of big stone working tools. Alas, I’m not sure if the big shed will make it on the module though; test fitting my mock ups with it included really crowds the open yard section of the scene.

The only remaining structure still present from that time is a brick building on the corner of 11th and R streets. It was originally built for the Carlaw operation, but I don’t think they used very long. In the 40s and 50s it changed hands a number of times. I plan on modeling it when it housed a beer distributor. The front door is on a short wall that cuts diagonally across the northeast corner and has some decorative brick work that will be fun to model. If I can figure out how to do it, that is.

One find in my digging around on Google was that John Carlaw****, before he came to Sacramento, was involved with quarrying the granite for the Ames Monument.***** This towering edifice was a tribute to the Ames brothers of Union Pacific and the Transcontinental railroad fame and the Crédit Mobilier scandal infamy. When it was built it was sited on the highest elevation on the railroad. Since then, the line moved away from the monument. Now it seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

The Carlaw brothers worked on another monument with railroad connections, the AJ Stevens Monument which is still standing in Plaza Park in downtown Sacramento. They did the stone work for the base.

I’ve been learning a great deal about the stone works industry from many sources, but I’d like to pay special consideration to Peggy and Pat Perazzo’s Quarries and Beyond web-page. The Carlaw project presents a great opportunity to model some of the equipment that was common in stone yards, and their site has been a treasure trove of information towards that end. If I get anything right on the look of the tools, it’ll be because of the Perazzos.

*A picture taken by Eugene Hepting that includes the crane can be seen on page 52 of William Burg’s Sacramento Then and Now.

**There is some evidence that the before the Carlaws arrived, the site itself was used as a stone masons staging ground for work on the capitol. There is also some documentation that shows the Carlaw brothers at least bid on some of the later stone decorating work down on the Capitol and the Capital grounds.

*** Gleaned from a Sanborn Fire Insurance map -- BL. SM. equals blacksmith if you ever see that notation on one of their old maps by the way.

**** The 1880 version of John Carlaw - it appears that “John” was a well used family name through the generations. In the Eugene Hepting scrapbooks (at the Center for Sacramento History) notes that in 1938 the business was run by Jack Carlaw, probably John’s son.

***** History of Laramie County, Wyoming by Jean Bastian page 329.



I’m stealing the * footnote idea from http://gotmedieval.blogspot.com/ - so here’s a shout out to Carl Pyrdum, proprietor of that wonderfully written site.

Got Buttermilk?

It's over 2100 miles from Sacramento's R Street to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but with the 2010 running of the Indy 500 only a few days away it seems timely to mention that there was once a much closer connection on R street to the Brickyard. 

The building that used to be at 430 R Street was briefly home to a branch of Meyer and Welch Inc. They were in the engine rebuilding business, specifically Ford passenger car engines. The major work was done in their Vernon California factory just south of LA, so I suspect the building on R Street was primarily a storage and distribution facility. Maybe. There is some evidence it was more. The 1951 Sanborn map includes the notation "WHOL. MOTOR PARTS & MOTOR REBUILD'G", so perhaps it wasn’t just storage. I'd like to find additional evidence to back that up though. 

The founders Louis Meyer and Lewis Welch both had connections to Indy, especially Meyer. He was the race's first three time winner (1928, 1931 and 1936). After that third win in 1936, he became famous for starting the uniquely Indy tradition of drinking milk in the winner's circle.

Also in '36 but well before Meyers and Welch Inc., 430 R was one of two focal points in a California Railroad Commission case. The case, CRC 4066, taught me a lot about how the WP and SP interacted on R Street during the depression era. It also led me down a fun maze of research on tariffs and reciprocal switching agreements. I hope to detail that case here at some point; it's a very interesting addition to the railroad and industrial history of R Street. 

   

Getting back to the milk drinking: The story goes that when Louis was a boy his mother told him that downing a glass of buttermilk was a great way to quench thirst on a hot day. Though perhaps hard to imagine buttermilk being the drink of choice today, it was Louis Meyer's habit to have it as his after race reward. And so it was bound to happen that a photographer captured the post race moment of Meyer drinking buttermilk while holding up three fingers for the number of his Indy wins. A dairy industry executive saw the picture in the paper and, not wanting to let a supreme marketing image melt away, took steps to make drinking milk (not buttermilk) an enduring Indy 500 winner's circle tradition. 

Cheers! 

History of The Thomson-Diggs Company

The search for details of this wholesale hardware company has led me in a research sprawl that has taken a number of interesting directions.  However, before I start digressing let me go over the basics of Thomson-Diggs.

The Thomson-Diggs Company came about from the merger of two hardware firms. In 1900 Frederick and Herbert Thomson bought out the other partner of Stanton-Thomson Company. Frederick had been the junior partner with them since 1884.  At the same time they combined forces with Marshall Diggs, former mayor of Woodland, who had moved his "Diggs Vehicle and Implement Company" to Sacramento just two years prior.   Incorporated January 4th 1900, Thomson-Diggs was the first chartered California corporation in the 20th century.

In 1932 Thomson-Diggs bought out competitor Schaw-Batcher which could trace its company lineage back to the Huntington & Hopkins Hardware store of early Central Pacific fame. 

In the August 1950 time frame of my layout, Thomson-Diggs was celebrating their golden anniversary and business was booming.  They were being led by their sixth president, Charles L. Mason, a grandson of founder Frederick Thomson. Their headquarters consisted of two big buildings which housed their warehouse and office space.  These were on the south side of R Street straddling either side of 3rd Street.  This site was their second location, having moved here in 1911 from J Street.  It also happened to be the birth place of the Sacramento Valley Railroad completed in 1856. 

Thomson-Diggs' "Main Plant" on the west side of 3rd and the subject of my illustration in the last post (as well as the three modern pictures here), boasted 220,000 square feet of air conditioned floor space.  It was built up in stages over a number of years.  The oldest section was designed by the architectural firm of Cuff and Diggs.  It had a square foot print 160 feet on a side and was 48' tall on the north (R Street) elevation. On the south elevation, where there was a pronounced dip in ground level, the building was 54' tall.  That dip, I think, is an artifact from when R Street ran on top of a levee, the city's southern defense against flooding until about 1900.  The Main Plant building expanded in 1937 with a low basement and ground level warehouse addition that more than doubled the footprint and filled up the block west to 2nd Street. Two additional stories were built on top of the warehouse addition ten years later.  This last section was designed by noted Sacramento architect Harry Devine. 

Across 3rd Street to the east was their heavy warehouse, Plant No. 2.  This corrugated metal structure was equipped with six 5-ton capacity electric hoists which facilitated the unloading of five rail cars an hour.  Plant No. 2 stored "iron, steel and wire products." Both buildings were rail served with a total of 650 feet of railroad spur. 

On a recent visit to the Center for Sacramento History I was able to view three different Thomson-Diggs Company catalogs - one dated from 1922 one from 1936 and one from 1950.  Each of these is a massive leather bound book. In addition to the illustrations of the Thomson-Diggs' buildings, the sheer breadth and depth of the product offerings is of great interest - nuts and bolts, of course, but also, electrical, plumbing, household items (like my sister's roasting pan), agricultural supplies, tires, toys (including magic sets), knives, latches, and on and on.   Thomson-Diggs' customers were retail hardware businesses in California, Nevada and Oregon and the catalog admonished them not to let their retail customers paw through the tome unsupervised. The catalogs appear to have been expensive to produce.

Thomson-Diggs remained on R Street until 1986 when they moved to a new warehouse in Natomas.  The 'Main Plant'  building was then refurbished as office space. Plant No. 2 is gone the space currently occupied by a parking lot. They were the second to last independent wholesale hardware company in California in 1991 - the recession and changing market forces cleared out all businesses of its type in California by 1997.   The Thomson-Diggs Co left the wholesale hardware business in the early 1990s and entered the commercial real estate market.  By 1997 even this venture wound down and Thomson-Diggs ceased to exist three years shy of their 100th anniversary. 

Bob Clark took this picture in the mid 1970s - we're looking west. Thomson-Diggs Plant  No. 2 can be seen in the middle background. The main warehouse is in the middle background a little further back.

Another Bob Clark photo taken the same day as the other.  This time a detail shot of Thomson-Diggs Plant no. 2

Ready for some digression?

The oldest section of the Main Plant building, as I noted earlier, was designed by the architectural firm of Cuff and Diggs in 1911, probably one of their first projects as a team.  Note the second partner's name, "Diggs". This was no coincidence; Maury I. Diggs was co-founder Marshall Diggs' nephew.  The firm of Cuff and Diggs was perhaps best known in Sacramento as the designers of the Traveler's Hotel.  Traveler's was completed in 1914; however, Cuff and Diggs were released from their contract in 1913.  As reported in the Bee and picked up in the trade journal Architect and Engineer, Maury Diggs was unable to supply some of the plans for the ornamental specifications.  What was keeping Maury Diggs from completing work on such a high profile project?

In March of 1913 Maury, along with his friend Drew Caminetti, became embroiled in a bona-fide sex scandal.   Both were 27 years old and married.   Both had children.  They started having affairs with two young women they met via a saloon keeper.  The ladies were 19 and 20 years old which at the time made them minors.  As adulterers, they weren't terribly discreet and the background scandal radiation of the town was getting quite warm.  Warm enough that Maury Diggs decided to skip town until things cooled off.  Drew and the girls decided to go with him.  They met down at the Southern Pacific station and were going catch a train to Los Angeles.  As fate would have it they missed that train and took the next available which happened to be the east bound China Mail.  They went as far as Reno where they rented a cottage under assumed names.  

Their departure from Sacramento didn't cool things off as hoped.  Far from it, things became unhinged.  The papers had a field day with the story and a massive man hunt was on for the delinquent husbands.  After three days they were found and the authorities hauled them back to Sacramento.  Three days after that U.S. District Attorney John McNab announced that he would prosecute the pair as being in violation of the Mann Act. 

Signed into law nearly three years earlier by President Taft and known officially as the White Slave Traffic Act, the Mann Act was promoted as an attempt to stop the spread of prostitution especially among recently arriving eastern European immigrants.  However, the key section of the act made it a crime merely to transport a woman across state lines for 'any immoral act'.  Buying your under-aged mistress a train ticket to run away from your wife and children across state lines seemed to fit the bill.  

Both Diggs and Caminetti were from prominent, wealthy, politically well-connected families.  Marshall Diggs, Maury's uncle, had been a California State senator from 1902 to 1906. Drew Caminetti was even more politically charged than Maury.  Drew's father, Anthony Caminetti  also a former California State senator, had just been appointed to be U.S Commissioner of Immigration by Woodrow Wilson. Politically, it didn't help that Anthony Camenetti asked the Attorney General for a delay in the trial so he could settle in his new job and attend his son's trail. McNab, a hold over Republican appointment, very loudly and very publicly resigned in protest when he was so ordered by the Attorney General from the  Democratic administration.  Even President Wilson himself became involved to quiet the firestorm in Congress that erupted.  

Ultimately they lost the federal case and, when appealed, the Supreme Court case in early 1917.   Maury Diggs ended up doing eight months in prison of a two year sentence before being paroled.  He divorced his first wife, married his mistress, Marsha Warrington, who stayed with him until he died in 1953.  They had one daughter together.  After prison Maury continued as an architect in the Bay Area.  He designed several buildings including the Fox Theater in Oakland (also recently refurbished) and a number of horse racing tracks.   

President Wilson came to Sacramento on a hot September day in 1919.  He was beginning the return leg of his national train tour to advocate U.S. entry into the League of Nations.  The Presidential Special traveled west down R Street before turning north on Front Street on its way to the S.P. passenger depot.  In spite of the heat, the reception was enthusiastic.  Wilson chatted with the crowd, many of them children, from the rear platform of the train as it slowly made its way across town.   I wonder, when his train passed by 3rd Street, if he noticed the prominent Thomson-Diggs signs on our two buildings.  Much had occurred, including World War I, since the Diggs-Caminetti case, but I wonder if he made the connection.