Tag Archives: John

May 26, 2012 · 5:45 pm

Beach Chalet – Family Lunch

We went to the Beach Chalet today for a family lunch. My brother Pete and his daughter Lynda, and our cousin Rip and his wife Joanna were visiting. They joined Eleanor, Paul, John and me for a leisurely meal watching the Pacific waves break on sunny, windy Ocean Beach near the Cliff House. The Beach Chalet is not only a particularly interesting and beautiful San Francisco landmark, its preservation (along with the Lucien Labaudt murals on its walls) was the passionate work of many years by our family friend Jo Hanson. Inside the oceanfront building are many delightful mosaics and murals from 1925 but my favorite work is the stair rail with mermaids and mermen, an octopus newel post, and other undersea scenes going up to the brewery and restaurant.

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Tagged as Eleanor, John, Paul, San Francisco

May 9, 2012 · 8:31 pm

Southern Pacific Photo Collection

Some years ago, my husband John bought an estate collection of 820 photographic slides taken by a Mr. J.R. Benedict of Redwood City, California. During 1970-1975, J.R. Benedict took pictures of Southern Pacific railroad equipment in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly on the Peninsula. Pictures of BART and the 1975 bicentennial American Freedom Train are included.

Recently, John sent the slides to Scan Cafe for digitizing. This was an experiment to see if this digitizing service produced quality scans at a reasonable price. The results are good. John posted all of the slides in a collection on our family photo archive site so that railroad fans (including Southern Pacific enthusiasts, railroad modellers, and historians) can have access to the 26 sets of images.

Sadly, although there are a few pictures of steel-strapped wooden cabooses which are sisters to WP668, our backyard caboose, there do not seem to be images of our own particular piece of rolling stock. John is looking to donate the physical slides themselves (an a DVD full of the digitized images) to a railroad historical society in the hopes that others will find the images interesting and useful.

Images Copyright John Plocher 2012

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as John, WP668

April 27, 2012 · 8:18 pm

King Valentino

Our 17-year-old Valentino was an only cat for five years since his sister Garbo died. From December – April 2012, he reluctantly was host to my mother’s two Siamese, with much battling for turf and attention. Since my mother and her cats recently moved to a nearby senior community, Tino has been very happy to be the king cat again.

Image by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

Douglas Fir Discovered

One of the interesting parts of owning an older house is discovering how it is built. Our 1930 Spanish Mission Revival home in Willow Glen has delightful arts and crafts style details, including oak parquet floors downstairs and on the upstairs landing. When my husband John first bought the house in 1998, many of the floors were covered with icky dark pink carpet. We ripped most of that out and refinished the upper floors and stairs ten years ago.

There was one room downstairs that still had the pink carpet. This is the only downstairs bedroom, so person using it does not have to share a bathroom. Our son Paul had the room until his sister Jessica moved out last summer, just before she got married. In 2002, Paul and his grandmother painted a mural of the Pokemon fire chicken Moltres on the wall. Late last year, Paul moved into Jessica’s old room upstairs so that my mother could move in after my father died. She and her cats recently moved into a senior community nearby, so we have finally gotten rid of the last of the pink carpet.

Under the horrible cat-stinky carpet, we discovered an equally smelly rug pad. Under that was amazingly ugly linoleum. Today, the linoleum came off and we discovered that we have a potentially-lovely wooden floor of Douglas Fir wood. We are delighted – Doug fir is not as good as oak parquet but it is much better than pink carpet. We will get the boards refinished and the room will become John’s new office.

Pink Carpet:

Linoleum:

Douglas Fir boards:

Images by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

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Tagged as cats, Eleanor, House Work, Jessica, John, marriage, Paul, Wade, Willow Glen

April 16, 2012 · 10:51 pm

New Caboose Photo Found!

One of our ongoing projects is looking for historical photos of WP668, the railroad caboose in our backyard where I have my office. WP668 was built in 1916 but the earliest known photos are from 1973. We keep hoping that images from 1916-1972 will be discovered. I was delighted today to find another image of our caboose on p.244 of a recently-published book John bought for me: The Western Pacific by Ken Meeker, 2011 (Publisher: White River Productions; ISBN: 1-932804-11-0). The image was taken by Dave Stanley in 1973. The caption text from p.244:

Sacramento Northern’s Holland Branch was an obscure freight-only, 16-mile-long line constructed in 1929 to tap the vast agricultural riches of the Sacramento River Delta’s Holland Tract. Diverging from the SN main line at Riverview, the line provided access to numerous on-line packing sheds. Outbound shipments of asparagus, celery, pears, molasses, and sugar made the branch a moneymaker during its earlier years. After completing daily switching chores at the Clarksburg sugar refinery on September 14, 1973, Tidewater Southern 746 departed Clarksburg Junction and headed back to West Sacramento with two cards of molasses and a classic home-built WP composite bay window caboose bringing up the rear. The distinctive grade at this location was necessary to enable the tracks to reach the top of the levee that protected the narrow waterway of Winchester Lake.

Earlier in the book, there is a photo of one of WP668’s sisters, caboose WP676, with this caption:

Hard-pressed for cabooses during World War II, Western Pacific constructed 62 composite wood and steel bay window models using 15001-16000 series outside-braced Pullman-Standard box cars originally built in 1916. The composite cars were used system wide prior to the arrival of all-steel cabooses in 1955. As steel cars arrived, the composite crummies were bumped to local and branch-line assignments. February 3, 1969 finds caboose 676 (built in 1944) trailing the westbound Reno Local at Martin, Nevada.

This is the second book in which a photo of WP88 is published. The other is Western Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Jim Eager, 2001 (Publisher: Morning Sun Books; ISBN-10: 158248063X, ISBN-13: 978-1582480633). All of the published references to our caboose are listed on WP668.org.

Our caboose was a popular location for Easter Eggs during the great backyard hunt last week:

Past and Future Homes

Saturday, John, my mother, and I spent another day of sorting and packing my parents’ San Francisco home. As my daughter Jessica wrote, this is about Dirt, Dust, and Duty. I shipped five boxes of my father’s clothes to my older brother, put five more boxes of family quilts, lace, and linens into the car, then packed in two small tables, two mirrors, some art, and a shower chair. Everything but the shower chair goes into storage. My uncle came over to pack some of his stuff. Then I did a walk through with the mover in preparation for his crew returning next weekend.

Today was my day off. After church, I worked in my poor neglected and dog-pounded garden. Then, John and Paul and I spent several hours reviewing the construction proposal for the new addition to our home in Willow Glen. Comparing the proposal to the architect’s drawings, we discussed flooring, counter tops, lighting, electrical outlets, TV cables, and all of the other minutiae which are so expensive if you don’t get them right the first time.

Our house addition will initially be for my 80-year-old mother, so we are making it wheelchair accessible, just in case. This means more than just a roll-in shower and wider doorways. Can she get into the pantry? Should the doors open in or out? So much to consider!

Cat Wars

My recently-widowed mother moved in with us in San Jose last month with her beloved young Siamese cats, Loki and Pouka. Our 16-year-old grey fuzzball, Tino, was not pleased with this development in his formerly-quiet life. Cat wars have ensued. With one brief interlude on Christmas Eve when we saw all three on a bed at one time, they have been glaring and growling (at best) and engaged in competitive carpet soiling and screaming fights (at worst). What fun.

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Tagged as cats, Eleanor, John, San Jose

Tag Archives: John

Beach Chalet – Family Lunch

Southern Pacific Photo Collection

King Valentino

Douglas Fir Discovered

New Caboose Photo Found!

Past and Future Homes

Cat Wars

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