Letter from California

Tony Gura, one of our West Coast correspondents, reports from Rio Vista:

I saw the great job you did cosmetically restoring Indiana Railroad 205 recently. This past Saturday was the first time I had the opportunity of riding sister car Portland Traction 4001 (ex-Indiana Railroad 201) at the Western Railway Museum. They did a beautiful job on the restoration where it is hard to believe it is 90 years old and it is planned to become their regular service car filling a similar role to IT 415 at IRM.

Interior of Portland Traction 4001

Due to this being their Railfan Day, WRM was running different equipment for each trip such as Key System 182 which used to run across the Bay Bridge between San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley until 1958.

WRM ran the three car "Scenic Limited" train composed of Sacramento Northern (SN) combine 1005, SN coach 1020 and Salt Lake and Utah parlor-observation 751. The SN ran very similar trains along the line serving San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Chico between 1913 and 1940.

This shows the result of 60 years of progress between Muni "Iron Monster" which was built in 1923 and San Diego Trolley 1018 which was built in 1982.

San Diego 1018 and Portland Traction 4001 are the cars most recently placed in service. San Diego 1018 had been in service until shortly before it was shipped north to WRM and was able to run shortly thereafter. The replacement equipment were built a little further to the northeast in Sacramento, California.

Finally, they brought out an electric freight train for display purposes. The locomotive, flat car and caboose were owned by the Sacramento Northern, which formerly owned the line the museum uses, while the two boxcars were owned by a connecting interurban.