Tag Archives: WP668

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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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:

New Stove in WP668 Caboose

Each year, John and I do a little more to improve WP668, our backyard caboose in Willow Glen, California. Today, we finally finished the project to install a stove, making the space much more comfortable during the winter. We put in a Majestic Brand Oxford stove from Bay Area Fireplace. The stove is on top of an antique piece of red-brown marble I bought at an estate sale several years ago (since a stove cannot sit directly on a linoleum floor). Below is the history of our caboose from the WP668 web page.

WP668 Caboose History

1916:
- WP668 was originally built by Pullman as a steel strapped Western Pacific wooden box car in 1916 (during World War I).
- WP668’s steel straps are embossed in several places with the Pullman brand “ILLINOIS. G. U.S.A.”
1943:
- In October 1943, WP668 was converted to serve as a caboose on San Francisco Bay Area freight trains (during World War II).
- Two bay windows replaced the original side freight doors. The front and back doors and decks, and interior caboose fittings were installed.
1976:
- After serving in the Sacramento area on fruit trains of the Sacramento Northern line, WP668 was retired from active service.
- WP668 was sold by Western Pacific to a private owner who leased out the caboose as office space on the San Francisco waterfront.
- We think it was this first private owner who removed the front of one of the bay windows and cut out a large window opening in the side of WP668.
circa 2000

WP668 was acquired by the Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point neighborhood.
Restoration by GGRM was planned and started.

2006

GGRM sold WP668 to John Plocher and Katy Dickinson in January 2006 after the museum lost its Hunter’s Point lease in San Francisco.
In February 2006, WP668 was moved by truck from San Francisco to storage in San Jose.
While in storage, the roof was rebuilt and the ceiling lights were installed.
Dickinson-Plocher backyard swimming pool was removed and a very short rail line built in the same location.

2007

San Jose City Council grants a variance for WP668. Building permits are issued.
In May 2007, WP668 was moved onto the very short rail line in the Dickinson-Plocher backyard.
The exterior was stripped and painted.
Both decks and the bay window were rebuilt.

2008

The inside was painted, the floor was rebuilt and covered with linoleum, the metal roof was installed.
The electrical and network wiring were completed.
The stained glass was designed and installed.
The cactus garden and arroyito were designed and created.
The historical markings and WP herald were added.
The ladders and stair handrails were designed and created.

2009

The San Jose City permits were signed off (24 February 2009).
Fainting couch restoration complete – couch moves into caboose.
Bay Window seat designed and installed.
Stair handrails coated and finished, stair lighting installed.

2010

Installed under carriage lighting.
Window seat cushion designed and created.

2011

Stove installed.

Work in Progress on WP668:
- Install roof walk, attach it to existing ladders
- Restore the rest of the windows (1 done, 5 to go)
- Complete the back deck and step woodwork (steel is done)
- Restore brake rigging and wheels
- Reattach and restore battery box
- Restore (replace?) the doors
- Caulk and paint repair

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July 16, 2011 · 6:57 pm

3 Beautiful Old Typewriters

In 2009, I wrote an entry about the old Remington Portable typewriter pictured at the top of my blog page. I recently acquired two more, an L.C. Smith & Corona Super Speed from a garage sale ($10), and an Oliver Standard Visible Writer (appropriately olive colored) which was a gift from my mother. All three are now part of my office in WP668 (our backyard caboose).

Typing this on my Apple MacBook Pro laptop, with its sleek compact design, makes me think again how far the mechanics of writing have come. The function of these three 80-year-old machines is the same but the designs are very different. I find them interesting and beautiful.

I learned to type on a portable typewriter. Now, many of them are being dismantled for their beautiful parts and sold a bit at a time on Etsy* and at craft fairs to those who like the steampunk look. As my husband says, before something gets to be antique and valuable, it has to survive being old and worn out.

* Etsy currently has 3,948 listings for handmade items such as rings, pendants, cuff links, and earrings which mention “typewriter keys”

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June 26, 2011 · 6:02 pm

TechShop San Jose Opens

Yesterday, John and Paul and I went to the crowded opening of the new TechShop in San Jose, California. We also joined as lifetime family members!

TechShop is a membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a community of creative and supportive people so they can build the things they have always wanted to make.

Location: 300 South 2nd Street San Jose, CA 95113
http://www.techshop.ws/ts_sanjose.html

We heard the opening talk by my former boss, Greg Papadopoulos, on the topic “Think Global, Innovate Local”. There were at least dozen ex-Sun-Microsystems Engineering staff there to cheer for Greg.

Being the owners of WP668 (backyard caboose), our family already has developed a basic workshop but having access to some of the larger TechShop equipment and the classes will help with a variety of home and hobby projects. Some of the equipment I want to learn to use: FlowJet 4′ x 8′ CNC Water Jet Cutter, Epilog Helix 60-Watt Laser Cutters, Tin Lizzie Quilting Machine, Hand-Held Plasma Cutter, and the Computer Controlled Embroidery Sewing Machine. Paul and I plan to take classes together in Autodesk Inventor, and Arduino 101 (Board Soldering) later this summer.

Arduino vs. Tino

My husband John is spending his free time preparing to give several talks at the National Model Railroad Association convention in Sacramento California early next month. He has been working for months on a demonstration unit to support his presentations – showing what a model railroad would look like of it was designed and wired as a series of control points connected by a codeline instead of in the usual arbitrary, hodgepodge ways. (A codeline delivers indications from the field to the train dispatcher, and sends commands from the dispatcher to the field.) John models in HO Scale when he is not working on our “prototype” caboose WP 668 in the back yard.

John’s project mostly looks like lots of blinky lights – especially when his office is dark. However, he tells me that this is state-of-the-art for model train layout wiring. John is in a running battle with our cat Tino, who likes to chew on little wires and keeps sneaking in to disable the Arduino.

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May 1, 2011 · 3:20 pm

Easter Egg Hunt

We had more than a dozen kids – aged 3 to 21 – plus their parents over for our annual Easter Egg Hunt last week here in San Jose, California. There were about 400 plastic eggs filled with candy, plus one gold and one silver egg to find in our backyard. We followed the same rules as last year with a few additions.

Last summer, one of our experienced egg hunters arrived with bags of empty plastic eggs for us. When she saw the eggs at a garage sale, Galena bought them to help support her favorite springtime activity. Following up on Galena’s inspiration, this Easter we said that kids could take home their baskets and plastic eggs if they wanted to but they could also leave them with us for next year. The parents thought this was great idea! I insisted that any eggs left with us had to be empty and whole – with tops and bottoms matched up (no leaving half eggs). We ended up with several cubic feet of empty eggs, plus 8 empty baskets.

This year I again provided “advisors” in the form of ceramic bunnies of different sizes and styles. Each child can pick any basket and advisor they want before the hunt starts. The advisors support the young hunters so that their parents are not tempted to help. I buy bunnies and baskets at garage sales and second hand stores all year so that the children have a wide selection to choose from.

Several of our Huawei co-workers came with their kids. I don’t think they hold Easter Egg Hunts in China so this was a novel treat. They had fun playing in WP668, our backyard caboose. The potluck lunch included a wide variety of dishes which everyone enjoyed eating.