End Of Shift
Stockton Terminal & Eastern RR

In the mid-1960s, the Stockton Terminal & Eastern RR was a small terminal operation in the city of Stockton, California. It snaked in and around packing houses, warehouses and industries. Its new owners had big plans, but they lay in the future.

I spent a day with the crew doing photographs. The day was raw and overcast, threatening rain. It seemed like we had moved a bazillion cars. One more pull, one more shove, and we were done. Quitting time!

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Then, again, maybe not. As we made our shove, the wheels of a UP box car rode up in a dirt-filled flangeway and went on the ground. [Expletives deleted]

There we were, far from the engine house, and not a single tool to help us rerail. So the crew began to scrounge. A few pieces of dunnage. A couple of tie plates. Considerable discussion about where and how to wedge our informal tools. Crawl on the ground to make everything right.

Signal the engineer. Back . . . back . . . slowly . . . slowly . . . slooooooooow . . . STOP!

She’s back on the track. Shove back to her spot.

STOP!

Now the locomotive is on the ground. Time to call a track crew.

There goes our early quit.

William R. Jolitz – Photographs and text Copyright 2019