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Prune Country by Norman W Homes Steel trails to San Jose w/ dust jacket
Prune Country by Norman W Homes
Steel trails to San Jose
Hard Cover w/ dust jacket (Some minore damage to dust jacket)
191 pages
Copyright 1985
CONTENTS
1. San Francisco & San Jose Railroad 9
Santa Clara & Pajaro Valley Railroad 20
Western Pacific Railroad 24
2. South Pacific Coast Railroad 28
Wright Station and Sunset Park 39
3. Southern Pacific 44
Branches in Santa Clara County 50
San Jose Track Relocation and new depot 65
Special Trains: Suntan, Big Game, etc 103
SP Prune Country Pictorial 127
Stations in Santa Clara County 134
4. The Feather River Route (Western Pacific) 138
5. Visitors and Specials 163
6. Industrial, Military and Amusement Railroads 175
7. Maps and Rosters 184
Bibliography 191
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
PRUNE COUNTRY RAILROADING Steel Trails to San Jose
Prune Country? Few recent arrivals in California's Santa Clara Valley - a gentle land surrounded by low mountains at the south end of San Francisco Bay - would think of their neighborhood as an agricultural center. Today, in all directions from San Jose the main economic activity seems to be home construction - but such wasn't always the case. In fact, the Santa Clara Valley as recently as 1940 was known as the Prune Capital of the World. San Jose, now the Valley's metropolis, was then a packinghouse and shipping center for prunes and grapes and other bounty of California agriculture.
LIP This is the railroading found within the pages of Prune Country Railroading, trains in the times when the Santa Clara Valley was an important source of revenue to the Southern Pacific and "interlopers" South Pacific Coast and Western Pacific. Author Norman Holmes takes us on the old "Way to San Jose," aboard wooden cars on narrow and standard gauge rails, in a comprehensive study of steam and diesel railroading in one particular county - Santa Clara - from the 1860s through today. What now might be only rusting, weed-infested spur trackage was once throbbing main line; virtual wars have been fought over features of the Valley landscape that go unnoticed today by both motorists and railroaders.
Norman Holmes is a native of San Jose, a working railroader who combines his livelihood with an active interest in historic preservation. In Prune Country Railroading, Holmes brings to the printed page his own research and photography (going back nearly four decades), as well as the accumulated expertise of other historians and photographers. Rather than simply a story of one railroad company or another, this book represents a somewhat novel approach: a regional study, focusing on one particular county in North-central California.
Nearly four hundred rare photographs are reproduced in these pages, most of them taken when the Valley truly was "Prune Country." Interurban cars and street railroads are mentioned only incidentally; but the facilities, equipment, and activities of all three local rail enterprises (SP, SPC, and WP) each rate dozens of pages. Even the few small industrial and military switching operations in the County are illustrated. Rosters of locomotives and numerous track maps are also included. It isn't Prune Country anymore - more people know it as "Silicon Valley" - but within these pages the happier days of railroading live again!
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