Trip Report: Southern California Railway Museum

 David writes:

Believe it or not, we moved to Utah in 2013. August will be our ninth anniversary of living next to the Great Salt Lake. I know my blog posts have not been that frequent, but I believe I have something of interest to the readership of this fine publication.

One of the advantages of living out west is that one can realistically drive to California for a beach vacation, which is exactly what we recently did. My daughter is in first grade now, and we decided to go to the beach in Oceanside, California for her Easter break. We left Salt Lake City on Thursday afternoon, spent the night in Las Vegas, and drove to California in the morning.

On the way to Oceanside, we stopped at the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris. You probably know of the place as the Orange Empire Railway Museum. The organization has undergone a rebranding effort over the past several years, hence the new name. The museum is known for its large traction collection, focusing on Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railways cars. It was a Friday in the off season, so nothing was operating, but the grounds were open, as were a couple of barns. Let's see what we saw.

First, by the platform were a string of Comet cars from New Jersey Transit. They use these for special events, like at Christmas or when Thomas visits.

Next we see the barn containing the operating Los Angeles streetcars. We went inside, but the darkness, combined with tight spacing meant that there were not great photo opportunities. We did find a California Street cable car from San Francisco, which was later used at Knott's Berry Farm.

Next we visited the Grizzly Flats barn and saw the Emma Nevada which was owned by Disney animator Ward Kimball. It's in the process of being disassembled for restoration to operation. 

Outside, I saw this GE steeplecab built for the Hutchinson & Northern in Kansas. Note the inside bearing trucks. Also, spotted near the visitor parking lot were this pair of former Rio Grande baggage cars. They house a model railroad display, which was not open.

On the way out of the museum, I spotted the marketing graveyard. There were headstones featuring the various former names of the museum.

Oceanside was nice. The weather was perfect. We rented a condo that was wedged between the former Santa Fe "Surf Line" and the beach. I was able to walk out the door and take a photo of an Amtrak Surfliner.