Southern Pacific Railroad

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Southern Pacific’s Cab Forward

Southern Pacific’s signature, and most iconic locomotive was the 256 AC (Numbers 4000 to 4294) cab forward locomotives.

These were some of the largest and most unique locomotives in the United States. The AC-12 class is less than ten feet shorter than the largest steam locomotives ever built: Union Pacific’s “Big Boy”. The AC-12 locomotive and tender weighed more than a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A380, combined.

The reason the cab forwards were unique is that, as the name implies, the crew cab was in the front of the locomotive, like a modern diesel-electric locomotive, instead of the cab being in back, near the tender.

Having the cab in front gave the engineer and fireman unequalled views of the track ahead. But the real reason for the innovations was to conquers the steep grades of Sacramento’s Mountain Subdivision over the Donner Pass. This massive locomotives operated between Roseville, Ca and Sparks, Nv where a powerful locomotive was needed to tackle the steep grades and have the tractive effort to haul long freight trains over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A locomotive of this size emits of lots of steam exhaust because a 4-8-8-2 was essentially two locomotives in one.

The Donner Pass route had 40 miles of snow sheds and 39 tunnels. This meant that in a standard locomotive, the crew could suffer from asphyxiation from the steam exhaust. By putting the cab forward, the exhaust stack was behind the crew and they avoided the caustic smoke, steam, and heat that these powerful locomotives emitted.

The cab forward proved to be a very successful locomotive for SP, with 256 of these engines used on it’s rail over the period of 50 years. The railroad had the largest fleet of articulated “Malleys” in the world. As a comparison, Union Pacific fleet contained 25 Big Boy locomotives.

In the 1950s, as diesel replaced steam, cab forwards spend the rest of there working life away from the mountains on the Coast Line and the Western Division. One of the last places cab forwards worked on Southern Pacific rail was the Cal-P line between Oakland and Roseville. 1958 was the last year a cab forward rode the rails, nine of these locomotives were taken out of service on September 24, 1958.

Out of the 256 cab forwards that were built, only one survives. The AC-12 number 4294 which is also the last steam locomotive that Southern Pacific ever purchased. 4294 was in service on March 19, 1944 and was taken off the the roster on March 5, 1956. She was only in service for 12 years.

While the other cab forwards were scrapped, 4294 was put in storage and then was put on static display on October 19, 1958, in front of the Sacramento train station. When the California State Rail Road Museum was opened, 4294 became the centerpiece amongst it’s collection of locomotives and rolling stock.

I was at the museum with my father in 1981 for the official opening of the museum. SouthernPacific’s GS-4 4449 and Union Pacific’s 844 (then numbered 8444) where in attendance and I will never forget when the two locomotive stood, pilot to pilot, on the track outside of the museum!

The massive running gear of the AC-12, Cab Forward. 4294 is the only surviving example of this locomotive.

The last time I have visited the museum was in November of 2017 where I did an aborted field sketch of the cab forward. There was something about the proportions of the locomotive that I did not get right. I had planned to return to the California State Rail Museum in the early Spring of 2020 but the cases of Covid-19 were growing at an alarming rate in the state and the museum eventually closed it’s doors for an indeterminate time.

So if I could not sketch the AC-12, at least I could sketch it from an image, which really is the next best thing.

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The City of San Francisco, 1952

January 12, 1952. Milepost 177, Yuba Pass.

The snowfall in January of 1952 on the western edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains was relentless. By mid-January, Highway 40 was closed. There was no way to drive from Sacramento to Truckee or Reno without a huge detour.

The winter storms during the winter of 1951-52 dumped 65 feet of snow on Donner Summit. Southern Pacific took pride in keeping the line open over Donner Pass, even in the winter.

Donner Pass is one of the snowiest places in the Lower 48 with an average snow fall of 411.5 inches of snow each winter. According to the report, Donner Summit Snowfall and Snowpack 1879-2011, there have been four times, since 1880, the snowfall on Donner Summit has exceeded 775 inches, and on two occasions the snowfall has exceeded 800 inches: in 1938 and 1952.

Southern Pacific had an arsenal of snow fighting equipment, including plows, flangers, and spreaders but their ultimatum snow fighting weapon was the rotary plow. They used this plow when the ordinary plows failed to clear snow from the tracks so the rotaries had to be called in to finish the job.

The railroad had always kept the line open, until January, 1952. Heavy snowfall will temporality close the line but so will an avalanche.

The story of the stranded Southern Pacific streamlined passenger service, the City of San Francisco seems to come out of an Agatha Christie novel. Think Murder on the Orient Express without the murder.

Into the snowy conditions, at just after 10 AM, the westbound City of San Francisco No. 101 headed out of Norden, Ca to make the slow descent, down into the Sacramento Valley on January 12, 1952. The 15 car train was headed by three Alco PA locomotives, decked out in the red, orange, and black of the Daylight paint scheme.

The train was several hours late because of the snowy conditions. As it rounded Smart Ridge on track #1, the train was stopped in it’s tracks, blocked by a snow slide that covered both tracks. The slide was a quarter of a mile wide. The engineer tried to back the train up but the City of San Francisco was trapped by snow on both ends.

At milepost 177, between tunnels 35 and 36, the City of San Francisco became stranded with 196 passengers and 30 crew members aboard. The passengers and crew would be stranded here for three days and the City of San Francisco would be stuck here for six days.

A photograph of passengers leaving the City of San Francisco behind to hike down to Highway 40 and the cars that would take them to Nyack Lodge.

Once the train had become stranded, Southern Pacific sprung into action to try and free the City of San Francisco and rescue those aboard. Rotary plows where sent up from both Roseville and Truckee in a attempt to clear the line and reach the disabled train.

Over the next three days the rescue of the City of San Francisco continued on with the use of rotary plows pushed by cab-forward Mallet locomotives, cars, trucks, helicopters, dog sleds, and Tucker snowcats. The rescue effort would claim two lives and damage rail equipment.

On the first day, the passengers took it their stride with the belief that the ordeal would be over soon. But as the train lost power and with in the heating system, things seem to worsen. The water system aboard the passenger cars froze taking the toilets out of commission. And they were also running low on food.

On the afternoon of the fourth day they were able to get all the passengers to hike down to Highway 40 which had been plowed clear up to Yuba Pass. They were driven by private automobiles to Nyack Lodge. After warming themselves ay the lodge’s fire place, the passengers were then put on a special train that took them down into the valley where they arrived in Roseville just before midnight.

Almost four days late, the train pulled into it’s final destination, just before 4 AM, to the city of Oakland. Oddly enough the City of San Francisco does not go to the city of San Francisco.

On point for the City of San Francisco on January 12, 1952 was an ALCO PA number 6019. Southern Pacific bought 52 PAs. While these locomotives are railran favorites, they proved to be a maintenance nightmare and SP later scraped the locos.
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Santa Clara Control Tower

I have been sketching a few of the remaining Southern Pacific water towers in California but I had yet to add a control tower to my sketchbook.

There are about nine Southern Pacific interlocking control towers still in existence in California and 16 are still in existence on the former SP system. These control towers where once ubiquitous on America’s railroads at busy junctions or rail crossings. Interlocking control towers centralized a group of signals (semaphore and lights) that were controlled by an operator to control the rail traffic by communicating different orders: proceed, caution, or stop. Think of it like a traffic signal for trains.

The Santa Clara Southern Pacific Interlocking Control Tower was built by SP in 1926 and put into service in 1927. The tower was in continuous use for 66 years at this very busy junction of the Coast Line and the Western Division. In the 66 years of operation, many trains, both passenger and freight, passed by. The famed Coast Daylight sped by the tower, stopping to take on passengers in San Jose.

The tower was in use until July 17, 1993 when the control of all switches and signals were moved to a centralized control center in San Jose.

A Southbound Caltrain pulls into Santa Clara Station on its way to the end of its run in San Jose. To the left is the restored control tower. On point is locomotive 915 “South San Francisco”.

Santa Clara is a busy junction where the Coast Line and the Western Division meet. It is busy today with both passenger and freight traffic. The passenger trains that stop or pass this way are Caltrain, Capital Corridor, the Altamonte Corridor Express (ACE), and the Coast Starlight. Four main line track pass Santa Clara, tracks to the northeast are used by Union Pacific for freight. The other three train a primarily used for passenger service with some routes turning off here to head north, on the east side of the Bay, towards Oakland (the Western Division).

A northbound Caltrain passes the control tower as it pulls out of Santa Clara Station heading toward San Francisco. This consist is being pushed by locomotive 905 “Sunnyvale”, an EMD F40PH-2CAT.

Sketcher’s Folly: Oops I did it again. I made a sketching mistake. In my sketch of the California Theatre in Dunsmuir I left out an “I” and now I made the egregious mistake of misspelling the county of my birth: Santa Clara. What next? Misspelling my own name?! Well at least I’m making new mistakes!

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Southern Pacific Water Tower: Coyote

There are two Southern Pacific water towers remaining in the Bay Area, one in San Jose (near the passenger station) and one further south on the Coast Line in Coyote.

I headed to Santa Clara County, the county of my birth, to the Valley of Heart’s Delight (Silicon Valley). The small, blip of a town that is Coyote is south of San Jose and just north of Morgan Hill.

Coyote is on the Coast Line, a 470 mile route that connected San Francisco and Los Angeles. SP’s famous passenger service, the Coast Daylight, blew through Coyote. A resident of Coyote wishing to catch the Daylight to Los Angeles had to either head to San Jose or Salinas. Coyote has a passenger station that was in service until December 10, 1958. The building still exists but is now abandoned and boarded up. At one time it was a private residence.

The abandoned Southern Pacific water tower and the double tracks of the Coast Line on the left. To the left of the tracks is the Metcalf Energy Center.

Before heading down to Coyote I stopped off at the town where I grew up: Sunnyvale. As I exited off Highway 280 and headed north on Sunnyvale Saratoga Road, I reflected, as I always do when I’m in Sunnyvale, on how much it has changed from the 20 odd years I spent here.

Along the road, there were things that where very much the same, such as the Longhorn Restaurant on the right (I don’t think I every ate here), and to the left is Fremont High School. The 1925 main building looks very much the same but according to a family friend, who is an assistant principal at Fremont, a lot of renovations are happening on campus.

The reason I turned off the highway was to see another water tower in the South Bay. This tower was not built by Southern Pacific, although it sits just north of the Coast Line. Before Silicon Valley, this area was known as the Valley of the Heart’s Delight and the valley was covered in apricot and cherry orchards.

According to the Sunnyvale orchardist, Charlie Olson, there used too be “eight to nine million” fruit trees in Sunnyvale. Now there are eight to nine hundred.

To process all the fruit, canneries where built along the railroad line. My father, after coming home from work, would put me one the back of his bike and he would ride on the same route he had just come from. He spent his working career at Westinghouse which was also right next to railroad.

During the harvest season, a favorite destination was a pedestrian bridge over the railroad. From this vantage point we could watch commuter trains come and go and also we could look down into the yard of one of the canneries. Here forklifts moved at a frenetic pace and I can still recall the persistent din of the processing plant as workers canned ripe fruit to be shipped, by rail, to the nation. At this time, in the mid to late 1970s, Sunnyvale very much had one foot in the agricultural word.

This cannery was the former Schuckls Cannery which was later bought by California Canners and Growers in 1963. It was in operation until the cannery was demolished in 1984. The year 1984 was a auspicious year in the valley, it was in this year that Apple introduced the Macintosh computer.

This was about to change as the valley and it’s orchards were slowly replaced by Silicon Valley. It is interesting that one of the valley’s sons recognized the beauty of this area but was also one of the catalysts for it’s demise. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, said, “Silicon Valley for the most part at that time was still orchards-apricot orchards and prune orchards-and it was really paradise.”

Can we say that Sunnyvale is now a paradise? Well I guess it depends on how you define “paradise’.

As I crossed over the railroad tracks as South Matilda Ave. become North Matilda, the water tower came into view.

The Libby Water Tower is all that remains of the largest cannery in Sunnyvale. Libby, McNeill and Libby opened it cannery in 1907 and by 1922, it was the largest cannery in the world.

The current water tower was built in 1965 and is shaped like a can of Libby’s Fruit Cocktail. This is all that remains of one of the biggest canneries in the valley. It is now surrounded by a business park with buildings occupied by Walmart and Raytheon.

Looking up at this water tower I can recall the sounds of the cannery working at full capacity, to can the bounty of the Valley of Heart’s Delight.

The Libby Water Tower in Sunnyvale. It has been repainted as a can of Libby’s “Fancy Fruit for Salads”.
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Southern Pacific Water Tower: Elmira

I planned to sketched the water tower at Black Butte, in the shadow of Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

I wanted to sketch this Southern Pacific water tower because of it’s historical significance and also because this is one of the few water towers still in operation as Union Pacific (it’s current owner) keeps this active to water any of UP’s heritage steam engines and other steam excursions that might pass this way. (SP 4449 topped up her tank here in the summer of 1991). The tower was built in 1926.

But not all plans come to fruition. I headed up to Weed to sketch the water tower only to find that the road leading to it was gated and all the signs around the area read “No Trespassing, Do Not Enter”. This area was still very much an active Class I railroad and I’m sure UP didn’t appreciated railroad gawkers and sketchers near their tracks.

So in order not to become a headline in the local paper, I chose to turn back towards Dunsmuir.

Steam engines cannot function without water. If water runs too low in the boiler it can result in a deadly boiler explosion. Therefore railroads built water tanks or towers near railroads, spaced out so there would be water along the line, when the locomotive became “thirsty”.

But I still wanted to sketch a more accessible Southern Pacific water tower so I did some research. I found that in the State of California, there are 16 Southern Pacific water towers still in existence. While I was not able to access one of those, there were still 15 left to find.

I hade seen the 65,000 gallon restored water tower across from the passenger station in San Luis Obispo. It was built in 1940 and was retired in 1956. I did have it on my sketch list but I didn’t get to it. One down, fifteen to go.

The restored Southern Pacific water tower in San Luis Obispo. This tower was slated to be torn down but local interests intervened and saved it from destruction.

I set my sights on the Southern Pacific water tower in the small Solano County town of Elmira (population 188).

Elmira was a major railroad stop in the early part of the 20th century as it was on the Cal-P line between Vallejo and Sacramento. At Elmira, there was a spur that went to Vacaville, Winters, and Rumsey as part of the Vaca Valley and Clear Lake Railroad. It is easy to understand why a water tower was built here because of the rail traffic and the spur.

Then U.S. Route 40 (now Interstate 80) was created as one the the first Interstate Highways in 1926. It was the first major east-west route, starting in Atlantic City, New Jersey and terminating in San Francisco. The route passed west of Elmira, through the town of Vacaville. Since that time the town of Elmira never recovered. As the population and development in Vacaville grew, the town of Elmira became a rural backwater with a shrinking population.

The same growth in the Nation’s Interstate Highway system also was the death knell for many railroads across the country with trucks and cars replacing freight and passenger service.

The last freight train to run on the spur to Vacaville was in 1985. After that the rails between Vacaville and Elmira were abandoned and then later removed.

The abandoned but still standing Southern Pacific water tower at Elmira. The tower is not fenced in and there are no historic signs about the tank. It looks to be similar to the 65,000 gallon tower in San Luis Obispo and I imagine that it was built in the 1930s or 40s and used up until the mid 1950s.

The passenger station is now gone but active double tracks still pass the abandoned and rusted water tower at Elmira. The Capital Corridor passenger service runs 16 trains every weekday. The 168 mile service runs from San Jose to the state capital in Sacramento. A few trains head further north to Auburn.

Looking north towards Davis and Sacramento. Two sets of polished tracks pass through Elmira. These rails get lots of use with 16 passenger trains on a normal weekday.
Westbound train number 729 passes by Elmira’s water tower at 9:28 AM on a Saturday morning at a rapid clip. There is no longer a passenger station in Elmira. The closest station is to the south at the Fairfield-Vacaville Station. On point is an EMD F59PHI with “California styling”.
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Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir is a train town.

At one time it was a company town for the Southern Pacific Railroad when 3,000 of it’s citizen’s where employed by Southern Pacific Railroad.

Dunsmuir was previously known as Pusher because this is where helper locomotives where either added or taken off trains. They were put on to make it up the Cantara Loop and the climb out of Dunsmuir as the line headed north. Helpers where also used on downslope freight trains to help with dynamic braking.

The town contains a railyard, shops, and a still functioning turntable to turn locomotives around. In it’s heyday, Dunsmuir had a population of 5,000, many of those working for the railroad, serving the labor intensive steam locomotives. When the stream locomotives were replaced by more efficient disel-electric locomotives, the town’s population was almost halved.

Today, the mainline sees two passenger trains and about 15 freight train daily. Most freight trains are now powered by three to four, 4,000 to 6,000 horsepower, diesel-electic engines, so the need to add engines has become obsolete.

Dunsmuir still feels very much like a train town even though Southern Pacific was aquired by Union Pacific in 1996.

The main street, Dunsmuir Avenue, is beautiful in it’s small town charm. And of course the main street parallels the main line.

The crown jewel of downtown Dunsmuir is the California Theatre. This 800 seat movie palace was opened in 1926. The theater featured a stage and a Wurlitzer pipe organ. The theater is only one block from the passenger station and, in it’s heyday, many of Hollywood’s finest and other dignataries visited the theater including Babe Ruth, the Marx Brothers, and Clark Gable.

In recent times the theater has faced some troubling times, after many stops and starts the theater closed in 2016. There was also a Masonic Lodge that met in the building for close to 70 years.

I parked on Dunsmuir Avenue and did a car sketch (great for social distancing) of the the epic sign and marque. I added a bit of artistic license when I added perhaps the best movie ever made featuring a locomotive, Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General (1926).

Across from the station is a mural on an oil tank. The mural was created by rail historian, artist, author, and former employee of the Southern Pacific and McCloud Railroad, John Signor. This is a sketch I did from my photograph. It features a Southern Pacific EMD SD45 T-2R diesel-electric locomotive and the famous Daylight GS-4, 4449. This mural represented the future and the past of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It is also a reminder of the name of the railroad that built Dunsmuir.
Only two passages trains stop at Dunsmuir Station. The north and southbound Coast Starlight, an Amtrak service from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles, California. To catch the Coast Starlight at Dunsmuir, you have to get up very early in the morning (or simply just stay up). The southbound Train 11 arrives in Dunsmuir at 12:35 AM and northbound Train 14 arrives at 4:56 AM!
Dunsmuir is an important division point in the Shasta Division where train crews change over. In this case, a BNSF freight train with a consist of hopper cars, change it’s engineer and conductor. BNSF is granted trackage rights to use this route by the tracks owner: Union Pacific.

Note: Part of sketching, and life I might add, is making mistakes and with this sketch I made one. I am a native Californian and I made unforgivable mistake of misspelling my own state! That sometimes happens when you are so focused on form and not spelling. I added the missing “I” on the street below.

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Railroad Park Resort: Caboose # 17

Who doesn’t want to spend the night in a caboose? It ignites the inner child in almost everyone!

I stayed in a Southern Pacific cupola caboose No. 17 (SP # 1047). This caboose is a class C-40-1 and it was built in 1937 (one of 50 that were built). The caboose arrived at the Railroad Park Resort in the early 1970’s when the interior was remodeled.

This caboose had everything you could ask for in a modern hotel room. The specs of Caboose #17 are: a king sized bed, full bath, refrigerator, microwave, tv (featuring the Resort’s own channel!), an air conditioner (very important on chilly mornings!), and table and chairs. What most hotel rooms lack is a cupola!

The view from the cupola is probably the best out of any of the cabooses at the resort. When looking to the southwest, the rugged peaks of Castle Crags catch the early morning sun.

I put my bags in the caboose, grabbed by sketching bag and chair, and picked my spot to sketch Caboose #17. To the left of the caboose was a sign that proclaimed like a proud exclamation mark: “MOTEL!” with an arrow that shot out of the “L“, pointing to the red caboose as if to proclaim to the unbeliever that, “Yes, you can stay in this caboose!”

A nice way to spend the chilly mornings was to sit in the cupola, with warm coffee, my sketch book and pens. This is s a cupola view of Caboose No. 17. In this view are three other cabooses at the Resort.
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The Osprey’s Nest

One of my neighbors knew I was struck with the affliction of birding and told me about the osprey’s nest on top of a Douglas-fir along the railroad about a 30 minute hike up river from my cabin.

After work on Friday, I hiked out of Paradise Park via the fire road and scrambled up a deer trail to the even grade of the railroad. This railroad is now operated by the Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway and takes tourists from Felton to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. At one time the railroad went over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Los Gatos but now does not go very far beyond Felton. I have hiked this railroad since my youth and it had been a few years since I played hopscotch on railway ties up the San Lorenzo Valley.

Walking along this rustic railroad always feels like I’m participating in a scene from Stand By Me on a quest to find a dead body. But in this case I was in search of a big bunch of sticks on top of a fir, high above the San Lorenzo River.

I kept one eye on the rails and one on the trees off to my right. My neighbor had given me good directions to the nest and when I was 30 minutes out of Paradise, I thought that maybe I had passed the nest. But how could I miss it? So I continued hiking upstream.

Ten minutes later the osprey nest appeared across the river between a break in the redwoods and firs. I put bins on the nest and could not detect any occupants. But osprey nests are deep and the osprey could be laying low. The only sign of life were the acorn woodpeckers that looked to have used the fir as their granary tree, their acorn larder, for years.

I was at a point in the line where the railroad curves gracefully over a curved viaduct. The concrete arched bridge was build by the Southern Pacific Railroad in March of 1905 and spans Coon Gulch. At this point the San Lorenzo River takes a turn and you can get an amazing view upstream. This point in the line is known as Inspiration Point.

It didn’t take long to see signs of life. An osprey flew in and briefly alighted on the nest. Bingo! The nest is occupied after all. The unseen osprey, presumedly sitting on eggs, sat up in the nest and became visable.

The osprey that flew in could have been the male who is responsible for bringing fish to the nest while the female does most of the incubating of the two to three eggs. The male perched near the nest on a Doug-fir and preened.

First sign of life at the osprey’s nest. Perhaps the male dropping off fish.

I stood by the railside and sketched the nest. On the left side of the spread is my field sketch (first in pencil then in dark sepia pen) of the Douglas-fir crowned by the osprey nest. The osprey perched on the right was drawn from a field photo I took of the presumed male. The title and text were added back at the cabin. In the end, I decided to create a spread that is almost monochromatic. I resisted the urge to paint in the sky because I didn’t want anything to distract from the form of the Doug-fir and nest.

The osprey doing a little housekeeping at the nest. This is presumedly the female who does most of the incubation of the eggs. Both sexes build the nest. A hiker who stopped to look at the nest told me that the nest had been there for past two or three years.
Ospreys reuse their nests each breeding season. A lot of work has gone into this nest over the past two or three seasons.
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Santa Barbara Station

The Surfliner was an hour late and I would have even less time to spend with Santa Barbara’s beautiful station. I had to catch the number 14, Coast Starlight back to SLO at 12:40 PM. So I figured I had time for a quick 45 minute sketch and an even shorter lunch but I couldn’t wander too far from the station. Revisiting the “Queen of the Missions” was out of the question.

I walked around the station, “shaking hands”with the place. The Santa Barbara passenger station was completed in 1905 and designed in a Spanish Mission Revival style, very much reminiscent of Burlingame Station. This building has all the hallmarks of Mission Revival: arches, a star window (in imitation of Mission Carmel), and adobe tiled roof.

The woman’s waiting room at Santa Barbara Station. Above the fireplace is a base relief representation of Father Serra, founder of the Alta California Missions. He is spreading his arms wide, waiting to hug any neophytes that happen to be in the Station’s waiting room.

Santa Barbara Station was one of seven stations that the Coast Daylight served. The route parallels El Camino Real, the Royal Road, that connected 21 of the Spanish Missions along Alta California’s Coast.

GS-5 Number 4458, pulls into Santa Barbara Station at an unspecified date. The loco pulls train No. 99, a northbound Daylight to San Francisco. There were only two GS-5 locomotives built. Numbers 4458 and 4459. (Union Pacific Museum Collection: SP photo)
Golden State-4 number 4443 taking on water at Santa Barbara in January 1948. The train stopped in Santa Barbara for only four minutes before heading south towards Los Angeles. (Alan Miller Collection: Frank Peterson photo)

The train station served the ever growing resort town on the Pacific Ocean that catered towards the high-end.

A sign of the wealth and affluence of this area is the Pullman car that is on static display near the train station. Pullman passenger cars where a huge improvement in comfort and safety from the rickety, wooden cars that were uncomfortable and sometimes downright dangerous. They were the height of luxury at the time, for the well-off passengers who could afford to ride on one.

But the Pullman car at Santa Barbara is something very different. In the later part of the 20th century, Pullman produced passenger cars for the extremely wealthy, that could cost up to half a million dollars, which was twenty times the cost of a standard Pullman passenger coach. These cars were considered “mansions on wheels”. They where coupled to the end of a passenger train and at Santa Barbara there were siding tracks where these luxurious cars would over-winter as their owners stayed in nearby posh hotels.

After my sketch I walked down State Street toward the Pacific Ocean and I was passed by a twenty-something driving by in a brand new Rolls Royce, a modern Santa Barbarian mansion on wheels.

Some things like the station and mission remind us of a very different time while others show us that things remain very much the same.

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San Luis Obispo Station (Post #300!)

San Luis Obispo marks the midway point on the Coast Daylight passenger route between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The town is named after the Spanish mission that was founded in 1772 by Father Junípero Serra. It became an important railroad town because it was at the southern end of Cuesta Grade.

It was a division point on the then Southern Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific) and because of it, the town had shops to service the locomotives, a roundhouse to turn engines around, and a wye to turn the massive cab-forward around (because it could not fit on the turntable.) This large articulated 4-8-8-2 engine was designed to go through the long show sheds and tunnels over Donner Summit but later, in the 1950s, pulled freight over the coast line and acted as a help engine.

SLO Roundhouse

A quick brush-pen sketch of the site of the roundhouse and turntable. While now little is left of the roadhouse, at the height of operations, the yard employed 44 men. The pile in the foreground are rusted railroad spikes. The line of boxcars in the background have been waiting in storage on a track siding for three weeks.

It was here at San Luis Obispo that northbound Daylights took on a helper to make it over the Cuesta Grade and its where a southbound train had their helper locomotives taken off.

The passenger depot was built in 1943 in a Mission Revival Style, slightly echoing the Spanish Mission that the city is named after.

Across the tracks from the station is the 65,000 gallon water tower used to water the steam locomotives that worked this division. The tower was built in 1940 and has been saved from destruction by the city of SLO. Often engines and crew where changed here but the Daylight GS-4 locomotive would make the entire San Francisco to Los Angeles run without being changed out at San Luis Obispo.

The station is still used as a passenger station although freight trains over Cuesta Grade have stopped. Both the Coast Surfliner and the Coast Starlight stop at this station. But more on these routes in a later post.

Three hours after leaving Santa Cruz, I set up my camp/sketch chair across from the station and sketched an elevation view of SLO Station. It was a glorious morning!