Nostalgia & History > Depot Friday: SP Berkeley freight house

This is complicated, but bear with me...

Before 1933, there were two paralleling electric suburban lines serving downtown Berkeley, CA from the south, SP's Shattuck Ave. line and Key System's F-line.  In a depression-era consolidation in 1933, the Key abandoned its line north of Adeline & Alcatraz Ave., leaving downtown Berkeley to the SP.  Just before the US entered WWII in 1941, SP abandoned its East Bay electric suburban service altogether, retaining only bits and pieces of it as de-electrified freight spurs to serve a handful of customers.  One of those was a single track spur along the former Shattuck Ave. line from Shellmound Tower to Shattuck & Dwight Way to serve Contra Costa Building Materials, situated in SP's former Berkeley freight house.  The Key System F-Line took over the SP Shattuck line from Shattuck & Dwight Way to Solano Ave. & The Alameda, but since SP was hanging onto their right-of-way between Alcatraz & Dwight, the Key had to rebuild a single track from Adeline & Alcatraz to Shattuck & Ward, where it reconnected with its old double track street running that had never been pulled up after 1933.  A crossover to the former SP rails was then installed at Shattuck & Dwight.  

Getting back to the freight house, it was situated on a short spur to the south that crossed the paralleling Key System F Line and ended at Oregon St.  SP filed to abandon the freight agency in 1939, but I'm not sure just when Contra Costa took over the building.  In any event, by 1960, rail service to the east side of Berkeley was on its last legs.  The Key System F-Line had gone to buses in 1958, and on April 27, 1960, Roy Covert found what he labeled a "dismantling train" parked in the run-around track near the former freight house.  The short train included a Model 15 Burro crane on a flatcar, another flat for old rails, a gondola for miscellaneous debris, and tool car MW 4280.  The small lettering on the side of the latter says, in English and Spanish, "Danger: As these cars are liable to be moved at any moment, all parties are warned against lounging or sleeping under or near them." 

---

---

---

Roy also caught a one of SP's handful of Alco S-3's pulling the train westward toward Oakland. That distinctive house on the left as well as the old Bekins Storage building still stand:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/YcRPJwSY4Hoje6Nj6
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DrndgPeAYUin9KwdA

Photos courtesy the Western Railway Museum Archives.

---

An interesting topic, I don't believe this has previously been covered.  Is a detailed map of the area available?  As a child I rode the F train from Berkeley to San Francisco with my mother and I always wondered about the trackage in the area.  I remember asking my parents about it and they had no knowledge.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/24 11:41 by goldcoast.

Fascinating photos and back story.
Bob

In pic 1, that's Oregon in the foreground and the freight house runs along the west side of Shattuck?

Very interesting series and narrative.

Larry

Here's an aerial photo from 1946.  The SP and Key System lines ran parallel to each other on Adeline and Shattuck, with the Key on the east side.

---

What you show here is something I never saw on this line. But I saw similar track, lines, and removal equipment at other locations on the SP. But like most others, I failed to photograph them. It is great that you are part of the preservation of this history and much appreciated that you have posted these photos and the historical data here. Thanks! The camera is truly a time machine.

These are great. It's interesting how bucolic the freight station block looked with those trees. Here's some track mappage on this deal. 

You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today!

The maps are helpful, however, are any Key System, IER or SP maps/track diagrams of the freight station area available for posting?  I would like to see greater detail of the track arrangement.

goldcoast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The maps are helpful, however, are any Key System,
> IER or SP maps/track diagrams of the freight
> station area available for posting?  I would like
> to see greater detail of the track arrangement.

While they aren't track diagrams, Timz posted some 1949-50 aerials in this thread: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5377840,5377840#msg-5377840

You can dig through the files at the Google Drive link he shared and try to find the right one. I have them on my hard drive but numbered them differently so I don't know which one you should download. Maybe TimZ can help. They are high res so you can make out the trackwork.  

Anyways, I was going to make a mosaic of all the 1949-50 aerials but didn't complete. Here's a video I made of the trackwork in question started from the north where the Key got back onto SP rails (you can see a Key train maneuvering through the crossover) and moving south toward the freight house. This is what the georeferencing software I use looks like. Never got around to completing this part of the mosaic unfortunately.

Evan in the earlier Berkeley thread on the steam engines you noted the WRM index says the stored engines were removed in 1949. Turns out the 1950 mosaic I posted from is more accurately a November 1949-March 1950 mosaic per TimZ's post above. So that brings these two sources into agreement which is nice.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/24 12:56 by phthithu.

You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today!

Thanks for sharing. The Bekins Storage building looks like a model railroader's dream.

Victor Baird

phthithu Wrote:

> Anyways, I was going to make a mosaic of all the 1949-50 aerials but didn't complete. Here's a
> video I made of the trackwork in question started from the north where the Key got back onto SP rails

I'm not finding the images you used among those still on the Google Drive.  From your video, it looks like the spur to the freight house (where Walgreens is now) continued across Oregon to serve some businesses between Oregon and Russell (where Berkeley Bowl is now).

I must have asked TimZ if he had anymore images and he sent me them some other way. Here's the two images that cover the Key's shoo-fly and the freight house area in another google drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dSZGLWNe_ErwpXevO9rHlUjh94GeCe7b?usp=sharing 

What was the track on Shattuck south of Ward St. you can see in the 1949-50 aerials? Street car line to where?  

 

phthithu Wrote:

> What was the track on Shattuck south of Ward St. you can see in the 1949-50 aerials? Street car line to where?  

I don't have the Key System streetcars book handy, but I think that was the 4 Line to downtown Oakland.