Greetings family, friends and train buddies! Research for today's brief vignette "The Debris Railroad" was inspired by this 116 year old postcard from the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.......Bill

RAILROAD POSTCARDS OF THE PAST

THE DEBRIS RAILROAD

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

Temporary Railroads for Removing Debris _______________________________________________________

Within a few months after the conflagration that had wiped out most of downtown San Francisco and before rebuilding could begin, Southern Pacific constructed a short lived grid work of temporary spur tracks in the burned area and began removing unsalvageable debris. The slow moving inefficient process, street access interference, disagreements between the city and contractors over financial concerns, dumping locations, and consideration of other removal proposals ultimately lead to the purchase of the steeple-cab electric locomotive Electra from the North Shore Railroad to run on streetcar tracks where wires had been rehung. Storage bunkers were positioned in key locations and at the peak, more than forty ballast cars and gondolas loaded with hand sorted debris, reusable bricks and scrap iron and steel were leaving the burn zone daily to wharves and dump sites throughout the city.

Circa 1906 postcard from the collection of Bill Ralph