I got to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento a little early so I walked over to sketch the replica of the Central Pacific passenger depot. (The former stations had burned down.)
This station is at ground zero from where Central Pacific started the Transcontinental Railroad. Mile Marker 0 was a hundred feet behind me as I sketched.
I walked around the depot and looked at two amazing Santa Fe steam locomotives that where sitting on sidings in static display. Both of them had come from New Mexico and both where not in great shape, needing some cosmetic restoration.
Santa Fe No. 2925 is a 4-8-4 passenger locomotive. This is one of the heaviest 4-8-4 Northerns ever built. Today only five of the 30 produced survive. SP No. 2467 is a 4-6-2 Pacific type build in 1921. She pulled passenger trains and was retired in 1956. The locomotive was restored to working order in the 1990s and is still operational.
Once in the museum, one locomotive on my sketch list was an EMD diesel-electric F7 painted in the iconic Santa Fe Warbonnet livery.
When I was a child my dad used to take me to the tracks to see passing passenger trains. And one Christmas he got me my first HO train and it was a smaller version of the classic Santa Fe passenger locomotive.
This paint scheme is so famous that if you Google EMD F7, a picture of the Warbonnet F7 comes up.
The iconic Santa Fe units where on point of the 2,227 mile route from Chicago to Los Angeles called the Super Chief. This was one of the first all streamlined diesel cross country route.
Today the only way to get from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz is to drive over Highway 17. You can no longer take a passenger train. The last train ran in 1940.
On the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, you can board a train at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk and it will take you 6.8 miles north into the mountains to the town of Felton.
Detraining here you follow the line past the train shed and machine shop of the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad and the old passenger and freight depot and then you cross Graham Hill Road and walk north on the rails toward Zayante, using the rusty rails as a guide.
The line begins to parallel Zayante Creek. The road builders used the watersheds of the Santa Cruz Mountains as a route to work up and down the summit. A good part of the Santa Cruz to Felton route parallels Santa Cruz County’s largest river, the San Lorenzo.
After a few miles you eventually come to a siding, this is the former stop of Eccles near Olympia Station Road. This was a flag stop as far back as 1901. There was once a passenger shelter (1913) and a freight platform.
The main line and siding at Eccles. The 310 foot siding was probably used to store lumber cars.
The station sign remained in place until 1942, when the station was decommissioned following the abandonment of the the railroad.
After World War II, passenger service was not resumed and the station shelter was torn down. The Eccles sign was saved and was on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz.
Here’s where the Eccles station sign used to be at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. It’s gone, like the rails that once reached over the Santa Cruz Mountains.
One a recent visit to the museum the sign was no longer on display.
I continued north as the siding rejoined the mainline. And after about a five minute walk, the tracks end without much ceremony. There is no bumper stop to mark the end. And one tail is longer than it’s mate, 4 feet and 8 1/2 inches away.
This is the end of the line and as far north as the tracks go.
He grew up as an only child in San Fransisco in an era when most people got around the city in street cars (or trams as they are called in Britain). He would ride them as a child getting to know the motormen (who where mostly Irish). Once they were beyond the last houses and running out into the sand dunes that would later become the Sunset District, the motormen would let my father take the controls as the motorman ate his lunch. Such a scene seems so unthinkable now!
We were down sketching at Hyde Street Pier and I wanted to show Grasshopper Sparrow some of the vintage streetcars that were running along the Embarcadero.
The most common vintage car seen on the F Market Line is a PCC (President’s Conference Committee) car. In this case No. 1053, painted in Brooklyn, New York livery, was built in 1947. MUNI has a fleet of 32 PCC cars.
This weekend was extra special because it was Muni Heritage Weekend and Market Street Railway was bring out some of the vintage cars like San Francisco Municipal Railway’s No. 1, built in 1912.
The one car that I wanted to show Grasshopper was an open-air car from the coastal resort town of Blackpool, England that I read was going to operating this weekend. This car is so unusual and rarely out on the line because it takes a crew of two to operate and has a lower passenger capacity that your normal PCC car. This is the Blackpool boat tram! I remember riding this car in the mid-1980s with my father.
This red and cream boat on wheels announces it’s presence with a nautical air whistle. These novelty cars where built in 1934 and out of the twelve cars in existence, MUNI owns two.
My plan was to drive along the Embarcadero from it’s intersection with Grant Avenue to the Ferry Building in search of the boat. It turns out that we didn’t have to search very hard. The Blackpool boat was at the turn around at Jones and Beach Streets.
So the chase was on! We easily passed the boat and pulled far enough ahead and pulled over just past Bay Street to get a photo run by.
Blackpool’s boat tram is a real head turner. The destination sign reads “NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR”. Here No. 228 heads on the rail right-of-way on Embarcadero towards the Ferry Building and the San Francisco Railway Museum.
We then drove on to the heart of the Heritage Weekend at the San Francisco Railway Museum near the beginning of Market Street and the Embarcadero.
We were able to get a parking spot on Mission and walked over past some vintage buses painted in the famous green and cream livery of MUNI. Shortly after our arrival, the boat pulled in front of the museum and I started a quick field sketch (featured sketch) before it loaded up and left. I finished the sketch with help from one of my photos.
The area around the museum had a carnival feel to it. Many people were out to see and ride these vintage buses and street cars. The museum was selling used rail books outside. I foraged through the titles, many of which my father owned. Perhaps some of these were his books; we ended up donating hundreds of my father’s books when he moved out of his home (my childhood home).
I selected a few titles about mainline steam engines and a book about the streamlined passenger train era. I took Grasshopper into the museum and pointed out a vintage streetcar roller sign that was displayed on the wall, which my father had donated to the museum from his collection of San Francisco street car artifacts.
The roller sign was procured from a streetcar near Fulton at a place called, the Boneyard. Nowadays we would call this “trespassing” and “stealing”. But because of this “stealing” and a railfans’s passion, this bit of San Francisco rail history is preserved and is now on display for all to see.
I talked to the manager of the museum and told her that my dad had donated the sign and he was also pictured in one of the displays. She of course knew my dad and was excited to meet me and noted that I looked just like my father ( but with more hair). This is always nice to hear!
She told me that my father had an interest in streetcars from an early age and he was not allowed to join the local rail society because he was too young so he formed his own youth group with his friends.
The picture of my dad at the museum is of him in later life aboard a streetcar. He is dressed up his motorman outfit. Standing to his right is his friend Walt, one of his lifelong friends he formed the youth rail group with. He must have been volunteering for some excursion. My dad is looking dapper in his black tie and Market Street Railway motorman’s cap (which I now have).
My 600th post is dedicated to my father, John E. Perry Jr. He introduced me to streetcars and trains, history and travel, and that a good life is well learned. His greatest complement of my sketching: that I drew a nice straight line.
Of all the tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad there is only one that is still in use for it’s intended purpose. That is Tunnel No. 8, the Mission Hill Tunnel.
This tunnel takes the line through Mission Hill because the town of Santa Cruz did not want the railroad to run through downtown. So they had to bore through the sandstone of Mission Hill. This meant the tunnel was prone to caving in so it was reinforced with internal redwood beams.
The tunnel is built under the Mission Santa Cruz Cemetery and in the early days, steam locomotives passing though would rattle and shake up the earth and occasionally a bone or two would fall onto the line leaving a macabre find for rail crews.
In 1985 the Southern Pacific line was purchased by Norman Clark, owner of the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad, and passenger service was revived from Felton to Santa Cruz, a round trip of 16 miles.
The Big Trees & Pacific coming off of Chestnut Street in Santa Cruz on it’s return to Felton. The railroad has some of the most street running rail of any tourist railway. The train is pulling into the right of way heading towards Tunnel No. 8. The train disappearing into Tunnel No. 8 on its way to Felton.
Just up the creek from my cabin is one of the remaining wooden trestles on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (in 1887 the railroad became Southern Pacific). This is the Shady Gulch Trestle.
Not only does this trestle still exist but is still used for rail service on the Big Trees and Pacific Railway.
Shady Gulch Trestle with the Highway 9 concrete bridge (1930) in the foreground. The dirt road to the right is the former Eben Bennett toll road. The concrete highway bridge replaced the toll road.
The original trestle was built in 1875 to span Shady Gulch. At the time, the line was built for the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad. When Southern Pacific acquired the line they rebuilt the trestle in 1905 to accommodate standard gauge.
The trestle of today very much looks like the original narrow gauge trestle of the late 19th century, sans graffiti of course.
The afternoon Felton-bound Big Trees and Pacific crossing the Shady Gulch Trestle. This tourist train tends to stop traffic on Highway 9.
My father spend his childhood summers in the cabin in the 1930, 40s, and 50s. He would tell me of the time a freight would be climbing the grade on the trestle on their way to Felton on a foggy summer’s morning. The wet track would cause the locomotive’s driving wheels to slip. And after many slips and the hyperbolic “chuff-chuff-chuff” of the stream exhaust, the train would back down the grade, sanding the track as they reversed. The freight would make another attempt, this time slowly with the sanded rails helping the drivers grip the steel. And off they went to Felton.
There is a single one car pull off on the north side of the highway bridge. I made three attempts to sketch the trestle but was foiled by a camper van that was camped out in the spot.
Was this guy going to spend the night here? On my third attempt of the day, in late afternoon, the van was finally gone and I was able to park, set up my sketching chair, and start my sketch of the trestle.
I timed my sketching time with the Felton bound afternoon Big Trees and Pacific train.
On my one week fall break I knew I was going to travel nationally. So I chose Virginia. (It’s for lovers, don’t you know?)
High on my list was to see the streamlined Northern 4-8-4, Norfolk and Western No. 611 at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke.
This is one of the most iconic American passenger locomotives ever made and is still active in excursion service. She was built in 1950, very late in the steam age, as diesel-electric locomotives where ending the age of steam across the country.
611 is one of the most technically advanced steam locomotives ever built. One disadvantage of stream was the large amount of hours needed to maintain and operate these locomotives.
To counter this, Norfolk and Western built their new streamlined locomotives, the Class J, at their Roanoke Shops. The locomotive was built with a self lubricating system that automatically lubricate over 200 bearings, including the bell mechanism. This meant the Class J could run for 15,000 miles before maintenance was needed. The 14 Class J locomotives could be serviced in about an hour and then be back out on the mainline.
It was such an engineering marvel of it’s time that is was designated a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Out of the 300 landmarks there are just seven steam locomotives that are honored with this designation and 611 shares this honor with Southern Pacific’s Cab-forward No. 4294 and Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4023, among four others.
I scoured the Virginia Museum of Transportation’s website for more information about 611. She is clearly the star of the show at the museum where she is called “one of the most iconic and beloved trains in American history”. Wow, that is some praise! Then I read the next line: “Inquire BEFORE visiting, locomotive travels”. Travels? Where could 611 travel in October? Where can you possibly hide an almost 400 ton locomotive that responds to the name “The Black Bullet”?!
I think the first time I saw an image of a J-Class was in a Brian Hollingsworth book. In this case: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the World’s Steam Passenger Locomotives.
It turns out that 611 would not be on static display at the museum. Would I be making this cross-country trip without seeing one of the most iconic 4-8-4s in existence? (Southern Pacific 4449 and Union Pacific 844 would be the other two.)
Nope! It turns out that 611 would be 80 miles to the north in Goshen, Va. The streamlined J-Class would not be on static display but under steam and on point of the Shenandoah Valley Limited! And I got myself a ticket!
Before I headed east to take in this Queen of Steam, I did three illustrations of 611. One was my version of a stylized promotional period sketch (featured sketch), a realistic head on view (above), and a drawing design of the profile of 611 and tender with specs (below).
Why has it taken me so long to read Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” masterpiece In Cold Blood (1965)? I’m not quite sure.
I’ve known about the book and basically knew what it was about but I had never picked it up to read it. Simply a case of “too many books, too little time”.
In Cold Blood is a true crime account of the shocking murders of four members of the Clutter family in their rural Western Kansas farm house.
The killings were a result of a botched robbery by two ex-cons, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
Hickok was told by a fellow cell mate, who had worked for Mr. Cutter as a farmhand, that Mr Clutter was a rich man and had a safe in his office full of cash.
This was far from the truth. There was no safe, no huge amounts of cash. Hickock and Smith left the house with a small transistor radio, binoculars, and just $40.
What In Cold Blood does better that most “true crime” accounts is getting into the mind of a murderers and answering the question what makes a man kill another man, in cold blood.
Capote was able to do this by cultivating a friendship with the murderers, especially Perry Smith. This is shown in the film Capote (2005) with a brilliant performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the southern writer.
In Cold Blood was Capote’s last great work. The book took six years to research and write and this prolonged process somehow destroyed him and he was never the same after and never finished another novel.
He became a regular on talk show where he was a true celebrity.
One of the more interesting tunnels on the South Pacific Coast Railroad is Tunnel No. 5 in Zayante.
This is one only two tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast line that is still in use, although not by a railroad.
As the railroad climbed its way up Zayante Creek it came to a granite outcrop that the builders could not go around or over so they had to tunnel through it.
Granite is stable and solid and because of that they did not have to add any interior wooden supports. When completed Tunnel No. 5, at 250 feet, was the second shortest on the line.
The tunnel was active until the Southern Pacific’s abandonment in November of 1940.
The tunnel began it’s current use in 1952 when the Western States Atomic Vault Company bought the tunnel, sealed both ends and used Tunnel No. 5 as a fire-flood-nuclear-proof storage silo, housing records (mainly microfilm and microfiche) for many companies including Disney. The silo officially opened on May 2, 1954.
The eastern portal was made the entrance to the facility and a guard shack was built (featured sketch) where a guard was stationed 24/7. We did not see any signs of a guard so we could not ask for a tour. (The facility is currently owned by Iron Mountain).
In times past, the company would allow tours inside the facility and one visitor deemed it the “most interesting dull place in the world”.
One can only guess the nearly 70 year old “secret” files that now reside in the former railroad tunnel known as Tunnel No. 5.
Peeping through the fencing toward the eastern portal of Tunnel No. 5. One of the two windowed buildings appears to be the guard shack. The parking lot now looks like an odd junk sale with junk that no one wants to buy!The former rail bed (sans rails) looking towards Eccles and Felton and Santa Cruz.
On a historic rail sketching adventure, Grasshopper and I headed up into the Santa Cruz Mountains to sketch a portal of one of the longest rail tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (later Southern Pacific) route.
This 28 mile route started at Vasona Junction in Los Gatos and climbed over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the beach town of Santa Cruz.
Part of this route still exists as the Big Trees and Pacific Railroad which operates a tourist train from Felton to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The tunnel we were looking for is the Glenwood Tunnel, also known as Tunnel No. 3. This 5,793 foot tunnel was active from 1879 to 1942. The original tunnel was built for narrow gauge but when Southern Pacific took over the line in 1887, they later converted the line to standard gauge (4 ft 8.5 in).
When the South Pacific Coast Railroad was first planned, then had to figure out how to get the road bed into the San Lorenzo Valley. To do this they had to built two one-mile long tunnels: Tunnel No. 2 (Summit Tunnel) and Tunnel No. 3 (Glenwood Tunnel).
From northbound Highway 17, we took the Laurel exit heading towards the former township of Laurel. We passed a few mountain homes and two bikers laboring up the hill as we headed down towards the former rail-bed.
We parked and headed out to a get a better look. The west portal of the Glenwood Tunnel was visible, but parts were obscured by trees and a power pole. The “private property” sign kept us at bay. Was this the best view we would get?
The not-so-great view.
I climbed up a side road, probably also private property, that parallels the rail bed, to get a better sketching vantage point. Even here, the portal was obscured by redwoods but I started a sketch anyway (which, like Tunnel No. 3, I abandoned).
Not being satisfied with the sketch I returned to where Grasshopper was sketching. His only company was a barking dog on the other side of a fence. There was a house just to our left.
A man peeked over the fence with his cup of coffee and said, “You can walk up to the tunnel if you want.”
This was the owner of the house (let’s call him “Bill”) and we had a nice conversation with him about living in the redwoods, winter storms, history, his spring-fed water system, and trains and tunnels.
We thanked Bill and walked around the chain that crossed the rail bed and headed towards the western portal of the Glenwood Tunnel. Now this was the way to sketch the tunnel (featured sketch).
Grasshopper sketching the western portal of Tunnel No. 3. Bill’s spring-fed water system can be seen on the right.Corvidsketcher in the western portal of Tunnel No. 3.
We walked into the 1909 concrete portal. The tunnel ended in about 50 feet.
In 1940, winter storms and landslides closed portions of the route permanently. Southern Pacific made the decision to abandon the line. The major tunnels were dynamited at both ends, closing the tunnels for good. The concrete portals are all that still remain.
Now that we firmly had tunnel fever, we had to find the other side of the tunnel, the eastern portal.
Tunnel No. 3 now passes under Highway 17 so you have to cross over the highway to find the other end.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel at Glenwood Drive.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel is much harder to get to than the western portal. To get a comparable view you would have to scrabble down a steep hillside or trespass through a stable to reach the rail bed which now seems to be a creek bed.
So we had to make due and sketch the portal from the side of Glenwood Drive, which the concrete portal now supports.
Corvid Sketcher 