Southern Pacific abandonment between Villa Park and Tustin

[ybx]

found this photo in the Orange County Archives:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocarchives/...72975@N22/

looks like the line was abandoned in 1976



anyone have any info about what customers wereserved here ?

[SPIKE]

Still a lot of orange and lemon groves in those days, probably some packing houses in the area.

Spike

[SteveD]

Definitely at least one very large packing house(Villa Park Orchards) to right(north) of pic, on Santiago Blvd. There had been a gravel quarry with its own industrial rail line downbeside Santiago Creek, too, until washed out by same floods in 1968 that tore SP bridge out there which closed branch . There was at least one good collision at or near the intersection depicted in photo shown, between gravel truck and train.

edits made when direction of view pointed out by another poster, shudda notice position of rails and Wanda ave, duh.

[ybx]

thanks !

the ROW is still mostly intactaccording togoogle satellite images.

[jjlamain]

When the line was abandoned I remember there only being the Villa Park packing house on the north side of Santiago Creek. In Tustin there was a lumber yard I beleive and a petroleum company where the line ended across Newport Av. There was a packing house in Tustin as well but I can't recall if it was open in 69.

[jjlamain]

By the way the railroad made a deal with some of the property owners whose property backed up to the ROW and many of them have expanded their back yards. Not sure if it was a sale or lease.

[BNSFTrainHouse]

Caution: Boyhood Memory Alert --

With the line severed by the washed out bridge over Santiago Creek, the line was pretty much dead when I moved to Villa Park in 1971.

Nevertheless, the Villa Park packing house, mentioned earlier in this thread, continued to receive seemingly stealthy service for the next five years, but I only ever witnessed a single train on the line -- a light engine running across the switch embedded in the Villa Park Road crossing on a dark Saturday night in October 1972.

One fine day in spring 1973, my third grade class walked to the packing house for a field trip and all of the goings on inside the plant were, as Hewell Houser would say, AMAZING! There were thousands of oranges rolling all around the plant on every kind of belt or guideway imaginable and the finished boxes rolled right into the open door of a boxcar out back.

[chris_wlkr]

Would be entertaining to see Hewell Houserdo a series on abandond railroad ROW's I think.

I had no idea you had been in Villa Park that long.

And btw - 75 percent of the content on here is boyhood memories.

Feel free to share as much as you want....

Much of this line can be followed on Google .. but it depends on what version or map you happen to find.

I seem to recall Mike P sharing a link to a different version of the map Google or maybe Yahoo currently host that showed more than is there on the currents.

I may have the link in my email archives, I will try and dig it out.

Chris - living on boyhood memories and forgetting what I had for lunch yesterday.

[mphill66]

Good luck on that, Chris. You'll have better luck than I in that search.

[chris_wlkr]

I found the email with the link - but the site it links to has apparently been updated and no longer offers a map. It was business you had looked up on the website called Insiderpages.com

Oh well.

I did find this however which pertains to the subject... sort of.

The STB filing of the UP's abandonment of a portion of the Tustin Industrial Lead that they did in 2005.