All Steamed Up : It’s All Aboard for Union Station’s 50th Birthday

In the last seconds before everything degenerated into tourists’ shrieks, mariachi bands and great hisses of steam that made words impossible, two of the great old locomotives of the past met Friday afternoon on railroad tracks northeast of downtown.

One coming from the west, the other from the east, the two steam locomotives traveled side by side Friday for the last half-mile of railroad tracks into Union Station to kick off the terminal’s 50th anniversary celebration.

The locomotives had thundered through mountain and desert to get to Union Station, where a crowd of about 1,000 railroad buffs, spectators and workers cheered as the two pampered survivors of the age of steam came to rest.

It was a homecoming for the red, orange and black locomotive they call the Southern Pacific 4449, which had pulled the famous Coast Daylight in and out of Union Station for 16 years.

Its Union Pacific counterpart, the all-black 8444, however, was on an adventure. This was the first Southern California appearance of a Union Pacific steam locomotive since 1956.

The locomotives, one from Portland, Ore., and the other from Cheyenne, Wyo., will be on public display through Sunday at the terminal, along with Union Pacific’s last streamlined passenger diesel and other engines.

The celebration will conclude Sunday with the Marine Corps Marching Band performing at noon in the north patio.

But it may not reach the peak of the fete Los Angeles held May 3, 1939, when 500,000 people flocked to the striking but unorthodox Mission and Art Deco-style building called “mission moderne” by its critics. They were treated with a historical parade featuring horsemen, mule-skinners, stagecoaches, trolleys and an 1869 locomotive.

On its 50th anniversary, the historic building stands at another threshold. Its rail business down to a mere 18 trains a day from the 60 that once passed through, the terminal is slated for refurbishing as a commuter transit center within a huge shopping, hotel and office complex.

The modernization plan announced last year by the Community Redevelopment Agency is a bold proposal to revitalize one of downtown’s most historic areas, which includes Olvera Street and Terminal Annex.

But for a moment Friday, all thoughts and emotions were in the past.

For the avid buffs and railroad workers, the best of the celebration came and went with the few seconds it took her the 4449 to pass.

Height of Technology

Built in 1941 in Lima, Ohio, she represented the height of steam technology. For 16 years, she pulled the Coast Daylight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 1957, supplanted by diesel, she was retired in Bakersfield and later was donated to the city of Portland as a museum piece.

In 1974, the 4449 was returned to service to pull the Bicentennial Freedom Train and in 1981 restored to her original Coast Daylight colors for the opening of the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. She last came through Los Angeles in 1986 for filming of the movie, “Tough Guys,” starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas.

For the half-century anniversary party, Southern Pacific borrowed the 4449 from Portland. In Oakland the locomotive picked up a train of several cars, seven chefs, six waiters, three porters, two barmen and three bar waiters.

In Santa Barbara, it picked up Southern Pacific railroad workers who were selected for the ride.

Railroad car foreman Wesley Johnson said he was chosen to ride the 4449 because he had worked the Coast Daylight and because he is about to retire after 40 years.

As the train headed toward the Union Station platform, Johnson peered out of its plum-colored dining car into the crowd standing along the dirt of the railroad yard. At last, he saw a face he knew.

“There he is. There’s Bob Hill,” Johnson told his wife, Maxine.

It was a railroad car foreman’s greatest moment, to recognize a fellow car foreman amid the glory of the 4449.

Later, Johnson reflected on his experience working on the Coast Daylight years ago in Union Station.

“I handled this train in this station in 1949 and 1950,” he said. “I’m probably one of the last,” he said.

He’ll hardly be the last to remember.

Never Forgot

Darwin G. McClintock, a card-carrying member of the Pacific Railroad Society of Alhambra, saw the 20th Century Limited steam alongside the Hudson River toward New York when he was a kid and never forgot. He shunned the downtown scene and instead drove to the Glendale Station so he could see the 4449 gliding by.

Standing on the Tarmac, McClintock chatted with two men who were strangers, except for their common love of railroads.

Reuben Golden, retired, said he worked the 4449. His job was to stuff a burning rag called “waste” into the firebox, turn a valve called the “atomizer” and “wham, you’ve got steam.”

For an hour, while they waited, the two railroad buffs talked about locomotives, citing them by name, number, railroads and routes they ran.

They talked about their love of railroad lore and they grilled each other on the minutiae of railroad technology.

Then the 4449 came and let out a belch of steam. Hundreds of people crowded around it, waving to engineer Doyle McCormack and shouting words he couldn’t hear over the steam. It sat for 10 minutes and was gone.

It will rest in Union Station until Sunday, then head to Sacramento for that city’s 150th anniversary.