An air force base railroad
portunity–as a newspaper photogra- pher working in the Sacramento region –to photograph the McClellan Air Force Base rail line.
Affectionately
nicknamed the “Wobbly & Western” by the railroad crews because of the abun- dance of poor track until an early 1980’s track upgrade project, the rail- road boasted of 11 miles of track in the early 1980’s, two diesel locomotives, a self-propelled diesel-powered rail crane and 13 faded blue freight cars. Back then, the tracks connected with the Southern Pacific Railroad just out- side the base perimeter, where crews would pick-up and drop off cars for in- terchange. The 1930’s and 40’s vintage USAF rolling stock never left the base. (Today the SAV interchanges with two Class 1 railroads: The BNSF in West Sacramento and the former Espee line, now part of the Union Pacific.) Two 1950’s-era GE center cab loco- motives did all the switching chores when I visited the railroad. Painted
The self-propelled crane (above) was used to pick up heavy loads and to assist in loading and unloading flat cars and flat bed trucks on the base. Note the fighter jet flying overhead. A two-track enginehouse was used to service the base’s locomo- tives. When not in use, the drop pit was covered with metal grating (right). The shop was equipped to handle the general maintenance of the locomotives (below).
million square-feet of rail served facili- ties, including 35 warehouses, 155 in- dustrial buildings and a 10-acre rail trans-loading yard. It wasn’t too many years ago, however, that this modern industrial park was the bustling Mc- Clellan Air Force Base, located five miles north of Sacramento, California, and home to the expansive USAF Transportation Operations Division standard gauge railroad. Throughout its history, McClellan
Air Force Base held the task of keeping U.S. military aircraft flying and had become a complex based on high tech- nology aircraft and systems. Military aircraft of all types, supersonic fighters to cargo jets called McClellan AFB home. It eventually became the head- quarters for Sacramento Air Material Area and then evolved into the home of the Sacramento Air Logistics Center. All this military infrastructure, from the late 1940’s through the Vietnam- era and well into the 1980’s, depended heavily on rail transportation to move everything including weapons, aircraft parts, radar systems and even file cabi- nets and government issued office fur- niture within the maze of light rail track and spurs.
In September of 1984, I had the op- 48 MARCH 2014
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