Moving Trains Off Ninth Street

Once the City Of Modesto makes its mind up about something, they are relentless in attaining their goal. Case in point: Removing trains from Ninth Street. Since the 1930s when the Tidewater Southern discontinued Interurban passenger service from Stockton, the Modesto City Council has put some kind of restriction on just how trains will operate on Ninth Street.

Caboose Past Hotel Back then it was the banishment of steam locomotives from city streets, which required the railroad to use a pair of electric freight locomotives to move trains down the length of Ninth Street until 1946. When the railroad purchased diesel locomotives.

TS 100 on Ninth St

For the last ten years the City government has been in negotians first with the Southern Pacific and the Tidewater Southern's new owner Union Pacific, then with the UP singly after it purchased the SP outright in 1996. The City's press release says it all:

"In 1996 Modesto removed from Ninth Street downtown, the "long" trains that run parallel to Ninth Street. These trains are, on the average, over 100 cars long, filled with grain for the Foster Farms chicken processing plant in Livingston. These monster trains traveled the length of Ninth at a speed slower than an automobile (15 mph), causing traffic jams and backups at peak rush hours. The shorter, about 75 cars, trains are expected to be removed in 1997 or 1998-with complete removal of the tracks to follow."

Modesto can be very single-minded!
(Above) A Union Pacific caboose passes the former Red Lion Hotel, built as part of Modesto's downtown revitalization project in the early 1990s. (Ken Rattenne Photo)

(Above right) Electric freight motor No. 100 escorts a steam train south down Ninth Street in July of 1946 (Arthur Lloyd - Rattenne Collection)