Stations: Tank Siding

High above Mountain Charlie Gulch only 0.4 miles from Virginia to the east and 0.6 miles from Zayante to the west sat unassuming Tank Siding. Nowhere else along the Southern Pacific Railroad line through the Santa Cruz Mountains was a station name so blunt, so obvious. Serving as the half-way point between Wright and Felton—the two other stops along the line that hosted water towers—Tank Siding was located conveniently beside a natural spring that provided a constant source of water for passing locomotives that were struggling to make it through the mountains. Although the stop never appeared on South Pacific Coast Railroad timetables, its entry in the first Southern Pacific timetable of the route in 1888 suggests it was an original, albeit undocumented, station along the line. The original water tower was gravity-fed from a holding pool up on the hillside that delivered water to the tank via a short redwood box flume. Following the upgrading of the tracks to standard gauge in 1908, the water tower and the box flume and box flume were replaced. The larger tank was fed via a pipe that was drilled directly to the water source.

March 1, 1940, Southern Pacific survey photograph showing significant sinking in the area across from the Tank Siding water tower. The eastern edge of the siding can also be seen here, which wraps around the next curve in the photo below. The station sign is visible center-right. [Bruce MacGregor]

For such a remote and seemingly straightforward stop, Tank Siding actually had multiple sidings and spurs, as well as a freight patron. Extant photographs from 1940 show a siding splitting off to the west immediately in front of the water tank, which continued for some distance. Meanwhile, a freight spur was on the other side of the water tank, terminating just before it, which originally had a 96-square-foot platform running alongside it for freight loading. The freight patron was the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company, which operated a clay quarry in the gulch. Immediately after the route between Santa Cruz and Tank Siding was cleared after the San Francisco Earthquake, around 1908, the quarry began operations, shipping loaded clay gondola cars to the cement plant in Davenport, which had opened in 1906. The company also briefly operated a lumber mill here, with accompanying support structures, although those disappear from records within a few years.

Another Southern Pacific photograph from March 1940 showing the double track just to the west of Tank Siding, curving around the sandstone hillside. [Bruce MacGregor] 

How long the Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company operated at the site is unknown, but it was no longer using the station by the 1930s. Throughout much of the station's history, it acted as an official flag stop of the line and appeared on both public and employee timetables, as well as all agency books. Abandonment records for the line in 1940 show that around 40 people still lived within the vicinity of the station and, at least hypothetically, were potential customers. However, Tank Siding's stated purpose as a fuel stop declined as locomotives became more efficient. With the upgrading of the tracks to standard gauge in 1908, the water tower there was reclassified for emergency use only. How frequently locomotives used it in either period remains unknown.

Photograph looking west from beyond the end of the double track, with a large sink area beside the tracks emphasised by Southern Pacific surveyors, March 1940.
[Bruce MacGregor]

Like the rest of the line in 1940, the station was abandoned and the water tower scrapped. Indeed, quite a lot of the damage to the line in the February storm occurred in the Tank Siding area due to the sedimentary nature of the topsoil. Sinks appeared under the tracks in multiple places and the constant run-off from the water tower certainly did not improve the situation. Southern Pacific Railroad survey crews photographed this area extensively and a number of these photographs survived to provide the images of the station above. No earlier known photographs survive—the image used on the cover of Bruce MacGregor's original South Pacific Coast book was misidentified and is, in fact, Camp Teller in Northern California. The natural spring that once fed water into the tank at the site also appears to have either dried up or been closed due to some natural event, possibly the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Geo-Coordinates & Access Rights:

37.103˚N, 122.014˚W

The site of Tank Siding is owned by the Santa Cruz City Water District and trespassing is not allowed, although rarely enforced. There are a few relics of the railroad at the site, including a telephone pole and pipes in the hillside. Metal detectors would doubtless discover more material just beneath the surface. The site is easily identifiable by the wide clearing on either side, the creek side of which has sunken significantly.

The site of Tank Siding along the route near the end of the Santa Cruz Water District property, c. 2010. [Brian Liddicoat]

Citations & Credits:

• Clark, Donald Thomas. Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Scotts Valley, CA: Kestrel Press, 2008.
• MacGregor, Bruce A., and Richard Truesdale. South Pacific Coast: A Centennial. Boulder, CA: Pruett Publishing, 1982.
• Whaley, Derek R. Santa Cruz Trains: Railroads of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Santa Cruz, CA, 2015.