I have always enjoyed sketching in San Luis Obispo. Its hard not to stray too far from the town’s railroad past.

SLO is at the base of Cuesta Grade on the former Southern Pacific’s Coast Division. The town, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, was a major division point on the railroad.

It was here that the roundhouse facilities employed 44 men at it’s peak. Trains heading north had to take on helpers to climb the Cuesta Grade (the steepest grade on the Coast Line). In the age of steam, SLO was a real railroad town.

In the present day, the passenger station and freight station (now a train museum) sit beside the Union Pacific mainline.

You have to look a little harder to find SLO’s steam past. South from the freight depot is the site of the 17 stall roundhouse. All that remains are the concrete semicircle foundation.

The last steam locomotive pulled out of the roundhouse in September of 1956. The roundhouse was torn down three years later.

On Sunday morning I sketched the remains of the roundhouse. There are plans in the works to develop the site as a Union Pacific maintenance facility. So this might be the last time I would be able to sketch the ghosts of steam’s past in SLO.

Another sketching location I was looking forward to adding to my sketchbook was a more recent part of the city’s history, the Sunset drive-in, opened in 1950.

What is amazing about this drive-in is that it’s still open. There are only 16 drive-ins still open in California and about 300 in existence nationwide. This is a steep decline of about the 4,000 drive-ins in the late 1950s, which was the zenith of outdoor movie going.