San Francisco Peninsula Route - 1954

History of the SF&SJ RR
Mission Bay and Bayshore Yards
The "Commute Parade" at 3rd and Townsend
Santa Cruz Branch / Sun Tan Special
San Jose Yard & Lenzen Roundhouse
Los Gatos Branch, "Big Game" Trains
Special Bonus: Market Street Railway "40 Line"

As steam locomotives were replaced by diesels, they were shunted to the Peninsula to work out their last days in commute service. A segment of this program includes historic footage that documents a typical afternoon rush hour as everything from twenty-four hundred class Pacifics to forty-four hundred-class mountain types thunder out of San Francisco at three-minute intervals.

The finale of the halcyon days of one hundred years of steam are being played out in front of our eyes, as though there is no end in sight. Yet within two years steam will be dead for all time on the SP.