"Big Tower"

College Park Tower

When first constructed in 1927, College Park was only half its size since it only controlled access to College Park and Newhall Street yards and the leads to the roundhouse. In 1935, with the mainline rerouted away from San Jose's downtown area, the tower was doubled in size to include the interlocking plant necessary to control the new trackage. The new route contained five signal bridges straddling two passenger and single freight mains wired for operation in either direction.

For local railfans, College Park Tower was located in just the right place: In the middle of the busiest piece of track in San Jose. The 2.6 miles of double-track mainline between Santa Clara Tower and the Cahill Street Depot was used by both SP's San Jose-San Francisco commute operation (now CalTrain) and Oakland-bound freights that were routed over the Mulford Line. In addition, Amtrak's Coast Starlight also shared track time. Up until the mid-1980s, freight traffic was still of significance out of San Jose, and trains from Oakland and Bayshore Yard (in Brisbane - just south of San Francisco) usually paused in town or were yarded for the addition or subtraction of cars.

A reassigned Cotton Belt GP60 pulls local duty in San Jose in August of 1995 as it drifts through the old College Park district across from Bellermine Prepertory College. (Below) On October 25, 1977 SP GP9E 3186 glides through the chilly morning fog as it prepares to stop at the College Park commuter shelter. The rightmost track is the Newhall St. Yard freight lead. (Both photos by Ken Rattenne)

San Jose Yard is really two yards in one. Refered to as Newhall Street Yard on the east end and Santa Clara Yard on the west end, it also originated a fair number of trains. College Park operators were required to coordinate arriving and departing freights, hostling-movements for commute engines between Cahill Street Depot and San Jose Roundhouse, and three shifts of yard jobs working both Newhall Street and College Park yards. Additionally, Amtrak and through freights from the Milpitas Line were also in the charge of tower operators. The convergence of the Milpitas line with the Coast Line formed a wye at that junction, and College Park Tower controlled the east leg.

As the 1980s progressed, tower functions became less freight oriented as traffic dried up. Ironically, it was the resurgence of passenger trains in the South Bay that breathed new life into the towers. Under the reigns of CalTrans (California Department Of Transportation) since 1981, local varnish eventually expanded to include six additional short-haul Amtrak trains and a total of 60 weekday commuter movements. It was all this new passenger traffic that kept College Park operators (and their brothers in Santa Clara Tower) from having too much idle time on their hands.

In spite of all this commotion, College Park Tower continued to stand silently, performing its role as interlocking sentinel. Inside, operators assured that switches and signals in their territory were aligned properly - no matter who ran the trains or owned the track.

Only the ominous flurry of signal department employees around the tower and its connecting hardware offered a hint of the future.

The Tower Consolidation project would soon take over College Park's function in a new dispatching center housed a block away from the Cahill Street depot. The new center, known as the Supervisor Commute Operations (SCO) would control the entire commute line as far south as Lick Siding, and would be under the direct control of SCO's dispatchers.

A Frantic Startup

When Amtrak finally assumed the reigns over CalTrain operations, things changed fast, but not without a few problems.

"On the first day of Amtrak operations it was a madhouse up here" recalls operator Gary Lower. "We were in the midst of a project to remove the signal bridge over by the roundhouse and to realign all three main lines. I had no power whatsoever to the interlocking plant. So I had to station a maintainer at each switch to supply me with power when I needed to make an alignment for an approaching train".
 
 

Gary Lower (right) explains the operation of the College Park interlocking machine to Amtrak engineer Phil Gosney on November of 1992. (Ken Rattenne)

On the Saturday before the takeover Gary had a special problem.

The JPB and Amtrak ran a press train between San Francisco and Gilroy to celebrate the changeover of ownership but no one had bothered to take into account the state of College Park that day.

"There were so many big wigs, supervisors and signal maintainers with their huge charts up here that you couldn't even move. In fact, so many trucks were parked downstairs (around the tower), no one could even drive in here.

"The Amtrak special was 32 minutes late out of the (San Francisco) station because the track department took out all three mainline tracks here in San Jose. Then they had to put them back in for each commute that ran through. Plus we had two freights come through College Park that morning. The roadmaster was pulling his hair out. He said he couldn't remember when two freights had come through College Park on a Saturday morning."

Gary kept his cool, though, and no one was any the wiser.
 

San Jose's OwnCollege Park was San Jose's largest tower. It featured the typical two stories with clapboard siding, and sported the standard peaked roof that is the signature of towers everywhere. The outside of the structure was painted standard SP yellow-with- brown trim, and the roof was shingled in green. No one could remember the last time the tower's aging wood had felt the bristles of a paint brush, either inside or out.

While College Park's second story held the General Railway Signal Company interlocking plant, the first story housed the guts of the system: The electrical equipment needed to operate the turnouts, equipment and signals. The plant was powered by 120 volt DC power, which allowed it to use a backup battery system that would be good for almost 24 hours in the case of a commercial power outage. In the second story, the operator had an excellent view of his domain, with the San Jose Roundhouse and College Park Yard visible on the left, and the Newhall Street yard and the College Park commuter shelter on the right. It was, as one former employee claimed, "a cool view."