The Twilight Years
By the mid-Seventies, Bayshore was in decline. Port activity in the City had slowed to a trickle while trucking continued to eat away at the local industrial customer base. Fewer customers meant fewer freight trains, which in turn meant fewer locomotives needing to be stabled at the Roundhouse and fewer freight cars passing through which could be serviced at the Freight Car Repair Shed. Passenger locomotives and coaches were also becoming rarer; the only passenger train on the Peninsula after 1971 was the Peninsula Commute, which itself was reaching its nadir at this time.
1982 was the final year for the remainder of Bayshore’s mechanical facilities. The Car Shops were closed in February, and by June, Southern Pacific had announced that the Roundhouse would follow within the year. While this didn’t come as a surprise to the Roundhouse’s 59 remaining workers (30 of whom were laid off immediately after the announcement), the inevitability of this course of events didn’t make it sting any less. The building was monumentally historic, not only in a broader context, but in the context of many of the employees’ personal histories as well.
A party was arranged to give the Roundhouse a proper sendoff. The remaining employees, those laid off, and retirees gathered inside, reminiscing about days past.
And with that, 64 years* of activity at the Bayshore Roundhouse came to an end.
For the building itself, however, this was not the end…
*A banner that was hung up for the final party read “BAYSHORE ROUNDHOUSE, 1918-1982,” which lends credence to the notion that the Roundhouse wasn’t in use from 1910 to 1918.