Old AT&SF Porterville-Orisi Sub

[tomplatten]

OKAY! AT&SF fans! When did passenger operations end on this sub! I seem to recall many many years ago a picture in an old Trains magazine showing a doodlebug on this line--but i could be wrong! My Sept 24, 1950 employee timetable makes no reference to scheduled passenger service!

[SteveD]

Gustafson & Serpico's Valley Depots book advises that the last scheduled passenger service over this district were motors discontinued at the end of 1938, but the Chiefs were detoured thru Porterville one day in June, 1966 due to a freight derailment on the main line(per L.A, Times).

[tomplatten]

Good Lord, the track was pretty rickety by then. The Chief must have been on slow orders all the way! Too bad someone didn't a picture of that!

[SteveD]

The Chief detour resulted in only a half hour delay

The only photo approximating that pasenger routing I know of is a 1964excursion over the Visalia District featuring Fs and high level consist shown in Icanberry & Krieger's Valley Vignettes.

[tomplatten]

Do you know if the detours used the tracks of the actual Santa Fe sub or did they use the SP tracks into Exeter? The SP tracks were in much better shape than the old SF sub. I would think the SF would not have wanted to risk derailment on the old sub with passanger equipment! In any event--what a sight!

[Myfordbrowning]

tomplatten Wrote:Do you know if the detours used the tracks of the actual Santa Fe sub or did they use the SP tracks into Exeter? The SP tracks were in much better shape than the old SF sub. I would think the SF would not have wanted to risk derailment on the old sub with passanger equipment! In any event--what a sight!

I was reading some old posts and wanted to comment on this one on the Valley branches. I was very interested in the SP and Santa Fe branches in the area between Bakersfield and Fresno fromlate 1980s. I found that the Santa Fe lines were generally in better shape that most of the Espee lines. The AT&SF speed limit was mostly 40 mph vs 30 on the SP and I notice few slow orders on the Santa Fe. There were cases of the Santa Fe routing TOFC trains over the branches during periods when the mainline was out of service.

It was difficult to keep up with the Ultra Turn in the areas where the railroad ran diagonally to the roads.

The Central Valley citrus belt was kind likeOrange County before it became the OC.:knowledge:



Cliff

[tomplatten]

In any event, those old lines are victims of change and have outlived their usefullness!