SP Narrow Gauge Crews

The SP narrow guage had a somewhat unusual labor arrangement, in that even after the original northern connection to the SP Salt Lake Division was severed and the remaining Owens Valley trackage became part of the San Joaquin Division for management purposes, crews for the narrow gauge continued to come from the Salt Lake Division at Sparks, since that was how the labor agreements were written in those days. It is 268 miles from Sparks, Nevada where the Salt Lake Division had an extra board, to Owenyo, CA where the SP ng. crews went on duty. I recently posted about one of the long deadheads I once made and that got me to thinking about how the SP ng. handled the long deadheads from Sparks.

While the Owenyo trains would have been a bulletined job, and probably was usually held by some regular folks with reasonably high seniority, there would inevitably be vacations, sick days, layoffs and such that would necessitate the deadheading of folks from Sparks.

I'm wondering if any the historians who occasionally post here have any information about this aspect of the operation, how often it happened, how it was handled in terms of transportation, cost implications, and so on. If I remember correctly, one of the crewmen mentioned using the regular bus service on that route.

I suppose a subsidiary question might be whether the relatively remote location combined with a bit a seniority on the part of some regulars made the jobs stable enough for local guys to work with little turn over.

To put it into something of a lifestyle question....I wonder how often those guys got to see their families. The good ole days were not so good in many cases.

JBWX



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2009 12:13PM by John West.