Amtrak San Francisco Res Bureau

Though I had been very actively involved in photography for many years before taking a job at Amtrak, I took very few pictures for many years. In a year and a half at the San Francisco Res Bureau, I only know of two photos that I took in the office. In fact, I never even printed these pictures. The negatives have been kicking around all this time, fortunately in a glassine sleeve so they aren't too scratched up.
At left is a group of people at The Wheel, the "brains" of the reservation system. From the left, if I remember at all, are Caroline McDaniel, Mary Sasges, umm can't remember, and on the far right Alan Orchison. Note the high-tech phones. For you younger folks, the circular thing on the phone is a dial...
The desk part of The Wheel is fairly ordinary, other than its six sides. The wonderful parts are the four rotating file sections ro reels sitting on the desk. Visible in at least the lower reel are the folders of car diagrams that make up each train. I'm not sure why there are so few folders in The Wheel. Normally every slot in three of the reels would have a folder in it, other than those actually being used. Each reel held a different train - train 6 from Oakland to Chicago, train 14 Oakland to Seattle, and train 11/12 Oakland to Los Angeles. Those were the trains for which our office held space.
Note I used 11/12 for the southbound Coast Starlight. Since the western operations were totally running on the Southern Pacific, we used the SP terminology. Any train leaving Oakland, regardless of compass direction, was going east. And any eastbound train had an even train number. SO even though Amtrak's timetable showed the train running from Oakland to Los Angeles as being train 11, everyone in the SP called it train 12. And of course the same thing applied to the train coming down from Seattle. SP didn't care what it was called out of Seattle to Portland, because that was on the BN. But once it left Portland it was known as train 13. At Oakland, it became train 12. It could get very confusing talking about trains 11, 12, 13, & 14 when the timetable had 11 & 14. Needless to say, it was the source of numerous problems over the years!