‘I guess when you deal with that kind of real estate, you don’t have people banging on your doors.’

It used to be The Hump, something very special in old railroad usage.

It was literally a hump with a single track ascending one side, then splitting into 64 spurs, like the veins of a leaf, as it descended the other. It was Southern Pacific’s train factory where long trains were broken up and their cars reassembled into other trains, depending on their destinations.

Men separated the cars as they came up The Hump. Other men, manipulating hand and foot controls in towers overhead, guided them down the right tracks, relying on their eyes and coordination to lock the hundred-ton vehicles together with a feather touch.

Tiny misjudgments could be heard as resonating booms that spread from the Taylor Yard on the bank of the Los Angeles River into the hills of Elysian Park on one side and Mt. Washington on the other.

In 1985, The Hump fell silent. It had become obsolete. Southern Pacific transferred train-building to a computer-controlled yard near San Bernardino. Last summer, Southern Pacific unceremoniously removed the track for salvage.

So now, The Hump has been transformed into something special in modern metropolitan usage: real estate. There are 150 acres of it, within five miles of City Hall. In its usually guarded way, Southern Pacific has let out the word that it’s now for sale.

“It’s no longer needed for railroad purposes,” said Southern Pacific spokesman Jerry Pera. “That’s the way we say it. Does that mean we would like to sell it? Yeah, probably we would.”

The Taylor Yard is the largest piece of land so close to downtown to hit the market since at least World War II. Actually, it is not just a single piece of land, but the largest in a chain of turn-of-the century railroad holdings that hug the river from Chinatown to Griffith Park.

First is the Cornfield, Southern Pacific’s retired yard for those aptly named piggyback trains made of flatcars carrying trailer-trucks. Then the Bull Ring, a switching yard. Last is Taylor Yard, filling the curves between the river and San Fernando Road all the way to the Glendale Freeway.

In all, it is 200 acres of nearly reclaimed open space. Its development, whether as industry, commerce or housing, would completely reshape the prewar communities along the river.

It won’t be simple.

Within the area are holdovers from the old days, such as the swath taken up by Southern Pacific’s main line along San Fernando Road and the huge locomotive repair shop on the east end of the Taylor Yard. Both remain in use, at least for now.

Also, there is the question of how badly the earth under the 500 miles of former track has been poisoned by industrial waste.

Pera concedes that 80 years of railroading have left their mark, but thinks that any polluted dirt could be scraped away.

Finally, there is the political tilt. Councilwoman Gloria Molina, whose 1st District holds all that land, would like its development to proceed deliberately. She has asked the Los Angeles City Planning Department to study a planned community of low-income housing and schools on the Cornfield.

The plan will take time to complete. In the meantime, The Hump is up for grabs. There have been queries, but no golden offer, Pera said.

“I guess when you deal with that kind of real estate, you don’t have people banging on your doors.”