California

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Martinez Sketching

I arrived a few hours early in Martinez before meeting my friend for lunch. I wanted to do some sketching around the Martinez AMTRAK Station.

The train station in Martinez is a busy place. While I was sketching, three Capital Corridor trains passed through.

On my last visit I wanted to sketch the Southern Pacific locomotive, with its odd consist of Santa Fe cars, on static display across from the station but I didn’t get around to it. I wanted to add it to a spread on my next visit (featured sketch).

Southern Pacific No. 1258 is an S-12 switcher steam locomotive built at the SP shops in Los Angeles. 38 locomotives where built in this class and there are 13 0-6-0 SP switchers preserved, more than any type of Southern Pacific locomotive built.

Switchers are not sexy nor classy like the GS locomotives. There epitomize function over form. The real workhorses of the Southern Pacific freight yards.

After sketching 1258, I headed to the other side of town to sketch the house of Martinez’s most famous resident.

This resident is the writer and naturalist John Muir. He lived here among the fruit orchards with his wife and family.

Muir married into the Strentzel family in 1880. The Strentzels had been farming the land, mainly fruit ranching, since the 1850s. Muir lived here, except when he was off traveling, from 1880 until his death in 1914.

I knew I wanted to do a sketch of the 1882 Italianate house but I needed to find the right perspective.

The touchstone for my sketch was the not-so-giant sequoia that Muir planted years ago. The tree has failed to live up to its name in the Martinez climate.

My Muir-sequoia-bench sketch.

I found a bench with the sequoia in the foreground and the Muir House in the background up the hill.

My favorite room in the Muir House. Muir’s “scribble den”.
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Western Railway Museum

I have memories that stretch back over 40 years of visiting Rio Vista Junction as a child, now called the Western Railway Museum.

The museum was not as polished and a little more threadbare back then. Lot of passion for trains and streetcars but perhaps without the funds.

My father grew up as an only child in San Francisco during the age of steam, streetcars, and streamlined buses.

Dad spent much of his youthful free time riding the streetcars into the dunes before the Sunset District was developed. He told me that the operators, always Irish, would let my father take the controls while the operator ate his lunch. Such scenes are unthinkable now in the age of lawsuits, codification, and over parenting.

When I was growing up, my dad shared his passion for transit. And the active rolling stock of the museum of Rio Vista was one of my classrooms.

And when I return to the Western Railway Museum, I feel my dad’s presence.

It’s not hard to find evidence of my father at the Western Railway Museum. Just inside the front door, his name is listed as a primary donor.

The old visitors center and gift shop has been replaced by a grand building reminiscent of a train depot that has a gift shop, displays, a cafe, and a research library. The new visitors center was dedicated in 2001.

When I visited the research library, there were many cardboard boxes with my father’s name on it. He was quite the collector. I was told that so far, 12,000 items from my father’s collection had been catalogued.

Both centers are still in existence and I sketched both as a contrast to the growth of the museum.

The former visitors center and service station.

The old visitor center is close to Highway 12 and the Sacramento Northern mainline and was formerly a service station. I assume this is where passengers caught buses to Rio Vista to the east.

And it seems gasoline was not the only service offered at the station. An E Clampus Vitus plaque near the front entrance reads, “Here between 1942 and 1948, the painted ladies serviced the needs of our men from Travis AFB. Closed by order of an unsympathetic sheriff.”

The old and the new, sketched in one spread.

The museum was founded as the California Railway Museum in 1960 on property at Rio Vista Junction by the rails of the Sacramento Northern Railway (the museum purchased 22 miles of the Sacramento Northern in the mid-1990s.)

After sketching the two visitors centers from two different eras, I sketched the old carbarn.

The cars facing out (left to right) are a Melbourne car No. 648, East Bay Street Railways No. 352, Key System No. 182, and Petaluma and Santa Rosa No. 63. In the foreground to the right is Portland Traction Company No. 4001. 4001 was waiting for passengers to board.

There was one other surprise in the open air carbarn. Earlier I had seen a great horned owl fly from the barn and head to the eucalyptus grove in the picnic area. While I was walking inside the barn I had noticed a very messy nest, it looked like ravens. As I walked near the nest I realized I was being watched.

This was nest was occupied by a great horned owl.

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California Registered Historical Landmark No. 714

The town of Mendocino has two California Registered Historical Landmarks, both are houses of worship.

I had already sketched the Temple of Kwan Tai on a previous visit and now I wanted to sketch the Mendocino Presbyterian Church.

I sketched the church from my curbside sketching blind and when I finished I walked over to get a closer look at the California State Historic Landmark Plaque.

The church was dedicated in 1868 and is the oldest church in continual use in California. As I was reading the plaque a kindly local asked if I wanted to have a look inside.

I replied in the affirmative and the kindly church lady put her dog indoor and returned with the key.

She gave me a brief tour and told me if I was brave (I was) that I could climb the ladder in the choir loft to see the chalk signatures of past pastors and church members on the inside of the bell tower (which I did).

She also said that I could ring the bell, so I grabbed the pull and did.

The church is built of the local wood, the wood that put Mendocino on the map: coast redwood.

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The de Young Museum

There is one art museum and one art exhibition from my youth that is at the fore of my memory.

I was in third grade when I visited San Francisco’s de Young Museum and the King Tutankhamen exhibit.

In 1979, the King Tut exhibit was a huge deal in the Bay Area. It seemed everyone had King Tut fever and wanted to see the treasures of his exhumed tomb.

The exhibit featured 55 objects including Tut’s golden death mask and sarcophagus. I have memories of marveling at the superb death mask.

The museum was founded in 1895. It moved to its present site in Golden Gate Park in 1919.

The building was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and was demolished. The museum was rebuilt in its current form in 2005.

Looking west from the tower with the galleries of the de Young.

I admit that I wasn’t a fan of the new building. But the view from the top is amazing. The building is slowly growing on me.

On a recent visit I did a western facing sketch from the top of the de Young tower of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands (below).

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Morro Rock

On a SLO Saturday morning with a breakfast at the Copper Cafe at the Madonna Inn (celebrity sighting: Steve Perry), Grasshopper and I headed out west past the Men’s Colony to do some birding-hiking-sketching at Morro Rock.

The 581 foot tall Morro Rock is a volcanic plug on California’s coast. A volcanic plug is the extinct neck of a volcano. It is a prominent landform that is a beacon for wildlife. The extinct volcano formed about 23 million years ago.

We birded around the rock. Avian highlights included white-throated swift, Bewick’s wren with common loons on Morro Bay and willets, black oystercatchers, and brown pelicans on the breakwater.

Around the base of the rock were “No Climbing” signs because Morro Rock is a peregrine falcon reserve. On our visit there were no signs of peregrine falcons.

Sketching Morro Rock with Grasshopper.

We left the trailhead and found a sketching perspective with Morro Bay in the foreground and found a sketching boulder to sketch from (featured sketch).

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The Madonna Inn

A friend’s 50th Shindig in San Luis Obispo provided me the opportunity to stay at the historic Madonna Inn for the first time.

The roadside hotel was opened in 1958 and has grown to the sprawling compound that it is today featuring five buildings on its 1,500 acre site.

The Madonna Inn sign calling visitors in from Highway 101. San Luis Obispo lies between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The hotel is known for its oddball decor, its hot pink accents, western murals, and 110 themed rooms.

I was staying in room 205, the Buffalo Room. The room has western/Native American themed accents, a rustic wooden four poster bed, and a huge American bison head hanging on the wall. This was sketcher’s paradise.

I just hoped the bison head didn’t give me nightmares!

A bed sketch from room 205.
Buffalo head detail. It seems to be looking at you no matter where you stand in the room.
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Capitola Trestle and Soquel Creek Bridge

Early Saturday morning found me in Capitola Village.

Capitola was founded in 1874 as a beachside resort and in the age before the personal automobile it owed its early popularity to the railroad.

The Santa Cruz Railroad, opened in 1876 and brought sun worshippers to Camp Capitola.

Southern Pacific took over the railroad in 1882. The SP brought beach goers to the small seaside town, passengers detraining at the new depot near the east end of the trestle, this location is known as Depot Hill.

I chose my sketching position above Soquel Creek on the historic Stockton Avenue Bridge (1934) which parallels the trestle. The seaside air was wet with fog, I hoped it wouldn’t smear my ink drawing.

The wooden trestle over Capitola Avenue looking towards Soquel Creek. The Capitola Depot is about 100 yards behind me and up the hill. I have always loved the parking spots under the trestle (parking is a premium in Capitola Village).
Colorized postcard (early 20th Century) of a double header passenger train with three baggage cars, crossing the trestle over Soquel Creek taking beach goers to Santa Cruz. This perspective is close to where I chose to sketch.
Looking down the trestle in direction of the Capitola Depot and beyond, the connection to the mainline at Watsonville Junction (15.7 miles down the line). The green growth around the tracks shows this track has not been active in over ten years.
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Muir Trestle, Martinez

I was meeting a friend in the East Bay city of Martinez and I had a little time to sketch before lunch.

Martinez is a hotbed of railroading with both the Union Pacific and BNSF passing through as well as some marquee passenger trains such as the Coast Starlight and the California Zephyr making stops at the Martinez AMTRAK station. And the Capitol Corridor commuter takes on passengers traveling north and south on shorter journeys.

The California Zephyr Train No. 6, at the old Southern Pacific Depot in Martinez. This train is heading east to Chicago. To the right in the background is SP switcher 1258 on static display.

There would certainly be something to sketch here and I was going to start with a historic train trestle.

I parked at the Mount Walda Trailhead. Soaring above me was the 1,600 foot long steel Muir Trestle (aka the Alhambra Trestle). The single track trestle was so long that I could only see and sketch one section of it before it disappeared into the trees to the east. The trestle rises 75 feet above the roads, trees, and houses it crosses over.

A detailed view of the steel supports of the Muir Trestle.

The trestle is within the John Muir National Historic Site. To the north is Muir’s Martinez home. Muir and his wife Wanda sold the land for the trestle for $10 and a lifetime rail pass to the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway. The original wooden trestle was built through a pear orchard and completed in 1897.

This is a historic photograph of the Stengel-Muir ranch in 1897. The Muir house is on the top left and the trestle is viable behind the house. At the time of the photograph, the trestle was constructed of wood.

At the eastern end of the trestle there was a passenger and freight station named Muir Station. The station is now long gone but is immortalized in a street that parallels the rails named Muir Station Road.

From this station Muir could ship his produce to Oakland or to the port in Martinez.

One of Muir’s neighbors in the Alhambra Valley was John Swett, Muir close friend. Swett was the State Superintendent of Public Education and is known as the “Father of California Public School”.

In 1898, Santa Fe purchased the line and it became their Valley Division. This division still exists as BNSF’s route from Richmond to Fresno.

The Muir Trestle from the intersection of Alhambra Way and Muir Station Road.

I took up a sketching position near the trailhead and started my drawing. The trestle above me is on the Stockton subdivision and is used by BNSF intermodal freight. There was no train crossing during my sketch.

SP 0-6-0 switcher No. 1258 and its consist of a wooden box card and Santa Fe caboose 390 on display across the tracks from the AMTRAK station. The locomotive is in sad shape, missing some hardware like her bell and whistle.
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Keddie Wye

One of the Seven Marvels of the Feather River Route is to be found a few miles north of Quincey.

The Feather River Route, also known as the Canyon Subdivision, stretches between Oroville and Portola, Ca and competed with Southern Pacific’s route over the Sierras at Donner Pass.

The Marvel is known as the Keddie Wye. This is where two tracks comes together to form one track, looking like the letter “Y”. Now this in itself isn’t much to write home about but when both sides of the “Y” are on trestles above a creek that joins together before entering a tunnel and then you know this is a special piece of railroad engineering.

The two forks of the “Y” are also where two different railroads meet. On the right is the former Western Pacific Railroad, now Union Pacific, and one the left is the BNSF (Burlington Northern and Santa Fe).

After about a 45 minute drive from Portola on Highway 70, the famous Keddie Wye appeared to my right. I pulled over and found a vantage point to sketch. I perched on a narrow trail above Tunnel No. 32 looking out to the two forks of the wye.

Now the only thing missing was a freight train. It would have been nice to see a train traverse one side of the “Y”. As I was told at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum, Sunday is a quiet day on the high iron.

After my sketch (right side of the spread), I headed down Highway 70 into the Feather River Canyon proper. The Highway parallels the railroad and the Feather River. This is a beautiful drive and I periodically looked off to left at the rails across the river. No trains.

I was about 20 minutes from the wye when I heard the screech of steel wheels on rail. I looked to the left and a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) was climbing up the canyon with a mixed freight consist.

I found the nearest pullout and then reversed direction as I chased the BNSF up canyon. I wasn’t going to miss the freight on Keddie Wye!

As I climbed up Feather River Canyon I kept an eye to my right for glimpses of the train. I should have no problem overtaking the train as the line speed limit was 25-30 mph.

I soon came to the end of the train and before long I was approaching the five bright orange diesels on point. I passed them with time to spare.

Once I reached the wye I reversed direction again and parked at the pull out. I figured I was about ten to fifteen minutes ahead of the freight and I took my position on the narrow path above Tunnel 32. Now I had to just wait, wondering if I would be able to hear the approaching freight from my position.

Within ten minutes I could hear the diesels working up grade and the first locomotive appeared below me. The train headed onto the left side of Keddie Wye onto the BNSF Gateway heading north towards Lookout and Klamath Falls.

What a memorable experience to see a piece of railroad history that is not a static museum piece isolated in time but in use today.

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Western Pacific Railroad Museum

You really have to like trains to make it out to Portola, Ca. From my mom’s house it was a two hour drive over windy roads to reach the small town where the former diesel shops of the Western Pacific were.

These shops and the rails around it, are now the Western Pacific Railroad Museum. The museum is adjacent to the tracks of the Union Pacific which acquired the WP in 1982. Heading west from Portola you enter the Canyon Subdivision which is the WP’s Feather River Route. This is one of the most scenic sections of the the former WP. It was the route the original California Zephyr took from the Bay Area to Chicago.

The museum has four cars from the streamliner, the California Zephyr.

While many railroad museums focus on the age of steam, the WP was one of the first major railroads in the west to dieselize. The museum has 29 diesels in its collection.

The WP acquired its first diesel in 1939. The SW1 switcher was built by the Electro Motive Corporation for an original cost of $64,525. It was built to work in the yard and with a top speed of 45 MPH, it was not designed to be out on the mainline.

The WP tested out the diesel (No. 501) and liked what it could do. It later ordered two more sister locomotives and 14 years later the Western Pacific was completely dieselized. The genesis of WP’s diesel age is now part of the museum’s collection.

A sketch of some of the WPRM’s collection including WP’s first diesel: No. 501.

The museum has many classic, epic, and iconic diesel-electric locomotives in its collection and I added a few to my sketchbook.

An iconic locomotive is the WP 805-A. This is an EMD FP7. This hood unit was on point of the California Zephyr from Oakland to Salt Lake City. The diesel was in service on the Zephyr from 1950 to the route’s end in 1970.

805-A is the last WP California Zephyr locomotive in existence, so I had to sketch it.

One of the epic diesels in the museum’s collection is perhaps the most epic diesels ever built, this is Union Pacific No. 6946. This 6,600 horsepower behemoth is EMD Class DD40AX “Centennial”, the largest and most powerful diesel-electric locomotive ever built and is the successor of UP’s Big Boy. 6946 is the last (out of 47) Centennial ever built. Only 13 Centennials still exist, the large locomotives having been retired from the UP fleet in 1986.

The beast that is the last Centennial ever built. Like the Big Boy, it’s two locomotives smashed into one mighty powerful machine.

A docent told me I could climb aboard the duel engine workhorse and I walked along the gangway to the cab.

I liked the view so I sketched the 1953 diesel shop from the gangway of 6946 (featured sketch).