Didn't wish to depart too much further from Olaf's original thread,
so I'll add to it here.
Back in the mid Nineties, I was loaned all of the time books from an
S.P. Coast Division engineman. It took me over 5 months ( I was still
working rotating shifts) to transcribe them to a P.C. I only did his career
on steam which went from 1936 to 1954.
The guys name was Walter Johnson. Interesting that his first and his last days on steam
were on a 1200 series 0-6-0 at San Jose. In the meanwhile he got on some
440 SP. steam locomotives. These included the Bayshore shop goat, 2 of the SD&AE
Consolidations, all of the GS-4 type, 2 of the GS-6 and three of the 4-10-2s.
One of his wartime trips was on 4449 on a mixed into Ford Ord. He was firing
on 98, the Coast Daylight and dropped a soft plug down by Santa Margarita and still
was promoted to engineer a short time later.
The late Frank Saarni pointed out one error to me and that concerned one of the 2900 class 4-8-0s.
I believe that Walter got the engine number wrong as that one had been vacated from the
roster sometime before he logged it.
Paper like this is fascinating to me, and likely so to many others. It was worth the time that I
spent.