Western Pacific's SJT/AFP
by Ken Rattenne

It's 1975 and Gerald Ford is President.of the United States, Disco is king and gas considered expensive. It's also a time when Eastern railroads are emerging from the financial chaos of the 1960s and Western roads still untouched by the merger mania that would eventually prevail some 20 years later. 

In California, the F-unit, that colorful  icon of streamliners and simpler times, was all but extinct.from the rails of the Golden State. Only two pockets of "resistance" could be found, both in Northern California: Amtrak, which was running a small fleet of ex-Southern Pacific FP7As on the Oakland-Bakersfield San Joaquin, and the Western Pacific, which still rostered six freight Fs used in mostly a captive service hauling a pair of trains between Stockton and Milpitas-San Jose twice a day, six days a week! 

In that year of 1975 WP's six Fs were well-known to Railfans throughout the state, even though two of them were stored out of service on the Stockton Roundhouse whisker tracks (never to run again). And so were the trains they pulled. The morning run was carded as the APF/SJM and the afternoon run the SJT/SJP. 

The trains were as close to regularly scheduled freights as one could get. Because the morning run was accomplished mostly in the pre-dawn hours, Railfans focused on the afternoon train, the SJT. Fans could count on the train departing Stockton at 1:00pm (or thereabouts) allowing them to place themselves anywhere on the WP main and predict when their F-united train would show up. 

In the photo above, the returning SJP is sitting on the Milpitas departure lead waiting for a highball from the Sacramento Dispatcher. In the lead is GP9 727, pinch-hitting for F 9--, which was out for its monthly inspection. In the background can be seen the Ford Motor Company logo, which marked Ford's Milpitas Assembly Plant, WP's best shipper; and to the left of the 727, nothing but empty green fields. Today, Union Pacific's Milpitas Yard is surrounded by industrial parks and pavement. 

Still in the future is the near loss of three of the final four Fs in 1977, due to   fire and a grade crossing accident.  And their their resurrection through a surprise rebuild in 1978. In fact, all four units pictured here made it into the 1980s and merger with the Union Pacific. All four F-units are now consigned to museums, while GP9 727 holds the distinction of being the only WP Geep to be donated to a city; it now resides in the city of Elko Nevada, on display downtown where once WP's and SP's paired track once lay.

For railfans, those were indeed exciting times!