As a Los Altos native ...

... though born in 1964 long after the rails were pulled up, I am grateful for this article. In my boyhood years of the mid 1970s, some of the bucolic atmosphere recalled in this article was still there. I regularly made the run from Mountain View to SF with my mother, also at age 8 to 10, when she wanted to shop in “The City.” SP still ran ancient Harriman “commutes” mixed in with gallery cars and the conductors still had the punchers. I was also impressed by their fat wallets of cash and belt-mounted nickel-plated coin dispensers, necessary because many passengers bought tickets after boarding. 

The Los Altos station is preserved, though modified, and has been various retail stores and cafes over the years. The Los Altos History Museum features an excellent O scale diorama-layout of the area, with a Pacific-pulled train operating continuously. I ride the main Peninsula commute line from San Carlos to San Jose to work nearly every day and regularly drive the former Los Gatos branch via Foothill Expressway.

Great article

Thanks William for reminding me of those sweet days in the valley.....DaveB

Thanks!

Thank you for sharing your memories, William.  You made your experience come alive, and I feel almost as if I got to go along on that ride with you.  For someone born after the end of steam, that is an amazing thing!

An interesting branch line.

I really enjoyed this article.  The line from San Jose  was double tracked, and today the Northern end right of way has a light rail track. Open fields back when I was a kid have mostly been paved over or replaced by subdivisions. I read, that today the water table is dropping and---they say they cannot figure out why.

The SP frequently used one of their two Lima built Pacific 4-6-2 engines with back pilots so they could safely run backwards to be stored overnight at San Jose. These engines  came when SP gobbled up the Arazona Eastern RR.  Until 1940 the tracks continued past Los Gatos up over the mountain to Santa Cruz with its beach, resort hotels and amusement park. 

Today, the station in Los Gatos is gone, and I am told that it was about on the site of the present day post office.  The orchards along the tracks were interesting because since all the trees in a row were planted the same time, they all were the same size, and row after row appeared identical. Some farms (orchards?) had a sign at the end of each row, and passers by on the road could see what was being grown. There are still a few remnants of the railroad where it went over the mountain to Santa Cruz. It was fun to read about this line, and it filled in a lot that I wondered about. The photos were excellent illustrations of this area.  

Victor Roseman

Los Gatos local

For four years in high school I rode the SP commuter train from San Mateo home to Redwood City and for a year in college I rode SP from Redwood City to Santa Clara,and back both morning and evening. This great article brought back loads of happy memories. Thanks for one last trip.