Updated 03/23/2000

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The job of tower operator is a very busy one. I have seen him answer 2 phones, talk at 3 different trains and throw the switches at one time! (While printing out the train orders...)

This tri-target signal greets trains south bound into the Elvas wye ( from Roseville ) The backs are cut away for train clearance. As the telegraph wires are missing from that pole so are these signals as of October 1999.

UP style signals are in place now, there are no little pot signals to control against the flow traffic on the double track wye. When the tower was in charge, these signals were displayed when the operator pulled the handle for that signal in conjunction with handle combinations for the switch movement.

Two legs of the wye are now single track, only the west leg is double tracked. All the track work was in conjunction with signal replacement and enabled Roseville control to operated this junction remotely. These signals were installed between 1959 and 1961 and replaced semephore style signals.

Eastbound manifest splits the targets at milepost 92.0 in winter of 1997. Elvas is listed as milepost 92.1 on the Martinez subdivision and 38.9 on the Fresno subdivision.

The Fresno subdivision joins the Martinez at Elvas. The Martinez runs up to Roseville where the Roseville subdivision begins.

In the late 90s and still occuring, you could see at least one coal train each direction through the east wye destined for Southern California's export docks. Even in UP times it is always headed up by Southern Pacific ac locomotives and pulling over a hundred aluminum coal hoppers from LA to Utah.

When this train passes over Donner from Utah full of coal, it does so in 2 or 3 sections. They bring one cut of cars up the grade, park it near Norden and go back to Sparks to retrieve the rest. Once at the summit it is combined and comes down into the valley as one train.

As evening falls this is the view of the engineer crossing over business I80 at the north end of the wye.

Fresno bound merchandise train passes over the I80 crossing in the distance behind the tower.

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