Tidewater Southern Railway

Robert Williams Remembers...

I worked at the M&ET from the early 1970's to the late 1980's.  During that time I had a chance to observe many of the operations in the Modesto area.  I also worked with a former Tidewater brakeman for many of those years.  Some of the stories were incredible.

From time to time I would photograph some of the action and here are some images from a hot Saturday morning in early June 1976.  The 700 class Geeps were seldom being used on the Tidewater at that time as traffic was becoming very heavy.  The 2000 class Geeps were almost the order of the day a few months later.  Soon the GP40's took over most of the work when the UP took the reins in 1983.

The first image is located on the lead to the M&ET transfer where the crew is making a nine car double over.  The concrete slab in the foreground is the remains of the J. B. Hill Co. warehouse.  To the left are cars destined to be picked up by the M&ET later in the day.  The two tracks were called the Hilco (short for Hill Company) and the Alley track because the track used to extend north across D street right down the middle of an alley to serve the United Lumber Company.

The third image is taken on the east side of College Avenue where the switch for the North Yard was located.  There was a call box at that point with the station name.  When the negative was printed, they left out the edge of the sign.

The brakeman that used to work for the Tidewater and then went to work for the M&ET retired in the late 80's and from my last information, moved out of state and has passed on.  He was a boomer type having worked for railroads all across the country.  At one time he worked for the Burlington and saw a rather drunk brakeman fall from the cab of a 5600 class O5b northern in the dark.  The brakeman recovered his composure and they completed their switching move.  Upon climbing back into the cab he proceeded to admonish the engineer about running a bit too fast while he was trying to detrain.

Finally, we have a view taken during October 1983 as the 2009 was ready to cross D street and make a delivery to the M&ET.  I tried to include the phone box with the Modesto sign above.  The entire M of W storage shed and phone box had been painted recently but no extra effort was spared on the aging sign lettering.  In the foreground can be seen the "Motor Spur" where the elector motor was stored on the south end of town when not needed.  For many years the Motor Spur was used as a hot car transfer between the M&ET and the Tidewater.  The M&ET crews would receive special instructions to place certain cars on the Motor spur from time to time.  If crews had more than the alloted amount of cars to fill the regular transfer tracks, we would use the Motor Spur. This usually happened during the busy season.

--Robert Williams

Now, just east of North Yard Junction, we're looking east from College Ave. as the track follows the alignment of the canal for a few hundred yards before turning north.  The engineer has just widened on the throttle a couple of notches as the slow speed street running is now past.  Speed is slowly starting to increase as the train length is over 30 cars of mostly loads of canned goods.

This image was taken during the pick-up moves on the lead to the M&ET in the long shadows just after sun up.  In the foreground is the remaining raised foundation of the J. B. Hill Co. warehouse. The remainder of the train is on the trestle clearing 9th street. Soon the train will pull forward past the D St. switch and shove back down the main to the cars and caboose on the trestle.