West Coast Electric News

Our friend Tony Gura sends us a report from the Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista:

I was unable to attend the opening day at IRM since I was riding the Scenic Limited and Vintage Comet wine tasting train at the Western Railway Museum out here in the Bay Area. First class service is offered on the Scenic Limited trains serving lemonade and cookies while local wines are served on the wine tasting train.

The powered combine and the middle trailer coach were both built in the Bay Area for a predecessor of the Sacramento Northern Railroad for service on this line while the red observation car was built for the Salt Lake and Utah by Niles in Ohio.

This is the interior of the first class parlor car. If I remember correctly, the furniture came from a Western Pacific lounge car since it ran as a coach in Utah.

Exterior of Salt Lake & Utah parlor-observation 751 with the shop in the background.

This is a picture of the shop showing the almost ready to enter service Portland Traction 4001 which is a sister to Indiana Railroad 205 at IRM and the first car acquired by the museum, Key System 271 from Oakland up on stilts.

San Diego Trolley car 1017 has just been delivered to accompany sister car 1018 which arrived last year. Seeing car 1018 there for the first time made me feel old since it is their first car that is younger than me, but not by much. The new cars in San Diego are built not too far away in Sacramento and the same truck that hauled a new car down transported car 1018 back.

There are two barns open to the public at WRM. Barn 1 is open at the ends and can be seen below. The four cars visible are from left to right: San Francisco "Magic Carpet" not quite PCC, Oakland streetcar, San Jose wood interurban and northern California wood interurban. The two wood interurbans are the regular service cars until Portland Traction 4001 is complete. Barn 3 opened in 2008 which has six tracks and is designed to be as nearly fireproof as possible.