This timebook is probably the record of working hours for John A. Gray, a yardman for the SP in San Jose. John’s book lists work done between September, 1949 and March 1950. The book comes from Chuck Catania’s collection, and he permitted me to scan it and share it on the Internet.
Chuck initially suspected this book was from the San Jose area; his guess was baed on the fact that the book came from the San Francisco chapter of the “Order of Railway Employees” and the identification (“Gray, AX-6-5114”) was a San Jose/Santa Clara telephone exchange (while the Cypress-5-2424 used for the crew clerk was a straight San Jose exchange.) John A. Gray was listed in the 1949 Polk San Jose city directory as a yardman for the Southern Pacific, living in Cupertino.
As a yard man, John didn’t fill out all the entries in the stock book; rather than listing trains, starting towns and ending towns, he just lists a few numbers and names of coworkers.
Each entry in the first two months has initials BRd, CP, NS, PA. I’m guessing CP and NS are College Park Yard and Newhall St. Yard, BRd would be Berryessa Road (and the on-duty location for switch crews for Japantown / East Side). PA might either be California Ave., Palo Alto or Phelan Ave for the San Jose south side job.
The last number appears to be the pay for the day because the book owner almost always sums the value. The pay rates of $12.26, $12.72 and $13.57 appear a lot. At the back of the book, the owner listed the pay rates for 30 days at each job title: $407.10, foreman; $381.60; helper; $367.80, herder (person throwing switches on the ground). The 6.8% difference between foreman and helper matches the difference between the two pay rates, so I'd guess $13.53 was for the days where he was the foreman, $12.72 for days when just the helper, and $12.26 for days when he was herder. The $13.57 days all match the days where his name appears in the right hand column, so I suspect that the final column was the name of the foreman for the day.
The first sets of numbers - either 3 digits or XEng - are odd; they don't match train numbers that I can find on any timetables. The numbers do group by location; 704-709 only appear with "BR", 711-737 only appear with "CP'", 741-753 only appear with NS, 762 and 763 only appear with PA, and 782 and 783 only appear with NS when he was down as "Gray Herder".
I'm guessing these numbers represent job slots where he was assigned; the next column which looked like times generally is the same for a job slot, suggesting it's a start time. The job mumbers don't seem to match when he was getting foreman pay, so I suspect that the senior person on the job was foreman.
704: Berryessa Road, 7:59 start 705: Berryessa Road, 7:00 start (one start time out of six was 1224). 706: Berryessa Road, random starts (three examples, three times; for one 359 start, he was foreman) 708: Berryessa Road, 1159 start, always got higher pay (night shift?) 709: Berryessa Road, 11:00 start 711: College Park, 7:00 start 714: College Park, 7:59 start 716: College Park, 759 start 721: College Park, 3:00 start 731: College Park, 11:00/11:59 start 740: Newhall St, 7:59 start 741 Newhall St, 7:00 start 743: Newhall St, 7:49 start 762: Phelan Ave, 300 start (one example) (Extra pay - $18.19) 763: Phelan Ave, 1100 Start (one example) (Extra pay - $18.19) 764: "Herder, Depot (Nov 17, 1949) 782: Newhall St, 7:00 start, herder job. (one example) 783: Newhall St., 3:00 start, herder job (one example)Extra engines were always “CP”, making me think that extras were all working out of San Jose’s College Park yard.
The job numbers do hint at the number of crew - 10 assigned to Berryessa Road, 20 to College Park, 20 to Newhall St., 4 for PA, 6 for herder.
So big questions:
* Did SP use job numbers like this, and do the job numbers match our guesses?
* What's BR and PA, and would it be likely that there would be dedicated crews at California Ave. and Berryessa Road? How far could they operate? What were the ranges on yard limits? (Should be in timetable, just need to look).