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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

August 1998
Transportation Museums and Attractions

Train Museums

Travel Through Time: Take a Trip to a Train Museum

Ever since the first "iron horse" chugged across the landscape more than 150 years ago, trains have captured the public's imagination. At rail museums scattered throughout California, visitors can indulge this fascination, reliving past eras when trains brought the adventurous to the West, served the state's timber and mining industries, ferried urban workers from home to job, and knit the state together with intercity connections.

If there is one rail museum in the state that most California train buffs would recommend as a "must-see," it would probably be the California State Railroad Museum (CSRRM) in Sacramento. And they would not be alone -- over 500,000 visitors annually traipse through the six-building museum complex that covers over 225,000 square feet of exhibit space.


Visitors to the Orange Empire Railway Museum can ride this interurban that once plied the Southern Pacific commuter line across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and later served in Los Angeles. (Don Brown/Orange Empire Railway Museum)


Part of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the museum -- unlike most other similar facilities -- is supported by taxpayer money as well as a nonprofit foundation, rather than by a volunteer-run rail association. Nonetheless, volunteers play a big role at the CSRRM as well-a veritable army of 800 volunteer docents help make the museum "one of the finest interpretive rail museums in North America."

On display in the 100,000-square-foot main building are 23 theatrically lit, impeccably restored locomotives and passenger cars. Museum-goers can experience the thrill of a train ride by walking through a hydraulically activated sleeper car that mimics the sounds and rocking motion of a train clattering across the countryside.

Those for whom a simulated ride is not enough can walk two blocks to the depot of the Sacramento Southern Railroad -- the official excursion railroad of the CSRRM -- and hop on board one of the 1920s-era coaches for a six-mile, 40-minute round-trip along the Sacramento River.

The CSRRM also runs Railtown 1897/Sierra Railway Company in Jamestown, east of Stockton. Built to serve California's Mother Lode, the Sierra Railway began operating in 1897. The 26-acre site and its collection of historic locomotives and rolling stock preserve one of North America's last surviving steam-era railroad facilities, including a working roundhouse where locomotives are maintained, repaired and stored.

Visitors have a choice of several types of vintage passenger cars for a six-mile, 45-minute round-trip ride, or they can make the journey in the engine cab. Walking tours of the railroad shops and roundhouse also are offered.

Almost 150 miles due north of Railtown 1897 is the Portola Railroad Museum, nestled in the rugged Feather River Canyon east of Oroville. Leased by Union Pacific to the Feather River Rail Society, the 37-acre site includes 2.5 miles of track and a collection of over 100 diesel engines and railcars that run the gamut from the world's largest diesel locomotive to a "railbike" built for six. Visitors may climb around on the trains, sit in the cabs and cabooses, and even operate a diesel locomotive.

Closer to home, two Bay Area museums specialize in more esoteric aspects of rail history. The Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista Junction, Solano County, is the place to learn all about full-size electric trains and their role in California's past. The site holds the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association's collection of over 100 streetcars, interurban or commuter trains, and electric locomotives as well as heavyweight mainline passenger cars and engines.

Visitors can watch trains being restored, or take an eight-mile round trip on the Sacramento Northern electric railroad. In the spring, the museum offers a 15-mile ride for wildflower viewing. A visitors' center due to open in 1999 will house the rail association's extensive archives on the history of rail transit, with a large collection of both still photos and film.

A small museum in the heart of San Francisco offers visitors a chance to see the actual cable winding machinery that keeps the city's famous cable cars on track. Located in the historic Cable Car Barn and Powerhouse, the San Francisco Cable Car Museum also includes antique cable cars and a photo display that chronicles the reconstruction of the cable car system in the 1980s.

In Southern California, the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris (17 miles south of Riverside) bills itself as "the largest operating railway museum in the western United States," with the emphasis on "operating." Its 65-acre site holds more than 200 streetcars, locomotives, and passenger and freight cars, with numerous examples of each of four major types of trains: transcontinental and mainline trains; narrow gauge lumber and mining camp trains; urban streetcars; and interurban or commuter trains. Visitors can ride restored historic trains along a 1.5-mile right of way, or similarly revamped streetcars on a .7-mile loop inside the museum.

Still farther south, the San Diego Railroad Museum displays over 80 pieces of rail equipment at its Campo facility (about 60 miles east of downtown San Diego) and operates a restored depot adjacent to trolley tracks in La Mesa (just southeast of San Diego city limits). But its claim to fame is the day-long -- and longer -- excursions it runs across the border into Mexico aboard restored 19th-century vintage trains. Operated by a nonprofit educational organization, the museum also offers regularly scheduled 90-minute and two-hour rides into East San Diego County's rugged back country.

Also in southern California is Los Angeles' eclectic Travel Town Museum, located in one corner of Griffith Park. Run by the city recreation and parks department, it offers a little something for everyone, including one of the oldest displays of pre-World War II passenger cars and steam locomotives in the U.S.; an extensive model railroad; a small collection of cars and turn-of-the-century firefighting trucks and equipment; a miniature train ride; and excursions on a historic re-creation of a full-scale, standard-gauge diesel train.

– Réka Goode (with Ellen Griffin & Barb Wilkie)

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