“Episode 5:
We got into Sacramento just an hour late all the way from Denver, found the Vagabond Inn across the street from the Southern Pacific depot and settled in. We walked under I-80 into ‘Old Sacramento,” home of the California State RR museum, not quite as extensive as the B&O in Baltimore but probably one of the 5 best places in CA to spend a day. (San Diego zoo, Yosemite, Monterrey, and ???) It houses a giant 4-8-8-2 SP cab-forward under roof. B&O has the more famous roundhouse in Baltimore but must consign its huge 2-6-6-6 C&O Allegheny outside.
We stopped in the Wells Fargo office/museum. Dad loved it and bought a bunch of postcards and a souvenir or 2. Also visited a couple of more touristy souvenir shops and listened to the owners complain about the 12 million schoolkids, lack of respect, no supervision, etc. Bought a few more postcards and retired to Denny’s at the motel for a chicken-fried steak dinner before calling it a day.
I got up early Saturday morning and went looking for a place to buy a camera. About 3 blocks from the motel I found a mega-mall stretching for about 4 blocks in the heart of the CBD. Nothing was open yet but finding the mall was encouraging so I kept going, dodged a couple of empty streetcars and bought a $20 35mm cheapo and some film at Rite-Aid another 4 blocks from the south end of the mall. There was a sign on the street corner for the Capitol building (where Ahnalt lives). Found it 2 blocks later with no problem, walked around and went in. The governator wasn’t receiving, but once past the metal detectors and security checks, you could roam at will. The bottom floor north held offices of past governors and lackeys, preserved as they had been furnished/appointed during actual use. Back to the motel. Dad figured out how to load and work the camera and we set off for Old Sac again to see if the kid hoards had dispersed. Most had.
We went into the RR museum about 5-10 minutes after it opened and had the place to ourselves for 5-10 minutes. Most of the people here spoke English. There used to be tracks from the old SP main line to the turntable at the RR museum, but the track is now opened at the fence, so they must not plan to acquire any more rolling stock. What they have already is worth the visit. My favorite car, a diner, has a fabulous collection of authentic china, linen, glassware and silver from dozens of different RRs set up on the tables just as though ready to serve, except it’s all under glass so people like me can’t drool directly on it. But on our trip the diner was undergoing restoration, and the retired D&RGW conductor who was reminiscing with Pop wouldn’t take my bribe to get us in. To compensate, he did give us a guided tour of the Pullman Palace Sleeping Car setting next to the diner. It is outfitted as though operating and rigged for motion so you get a remarkably realistic sensation of nighttime train travel at 80 mph, complete with jointed rail, crossing signal bells and lights, with doppler effect. So now that’s my favorite car. I think I got the conductor to autograph my museum program and a picture of Dad firing the mammoth cab-forward.
After the museum, we took the Sacramento Southern excursion train from Old Sacramento that runs along the Sacramento River for about 6 miles. A good trip, not crowded, pulled by a small oil-fired 0-4-0 steamer. I got a few pictures with the new camera. After the ride, we moseyed back to the motel and lunched. I returned to old town and walked across the drawbridge over the Sacramento River while Pop rested. Halfway across the bridge alarm sounded and they cleared the draw of cars and me, then raised it. The attendant was a woman. She had to announce a dozen times on their loudspeaker system for a car that had stopped past the crossing gates but before the draw to go on across. He finally did. With the draw up, a little 16 ft Sunfish went under and cleared by 20 ft. I think the attendant was bored. I wandered around a little more along the river and through an almost authentic re-creation of a 1850’s assayer’s office/jewelry store that I had visited 5 years earlier. It was starting to get a little dusky, so I got some photos of the Pony Express Rider statue and went back to get Pop, eat and pack.
The Coast Starlight was scheduled to leave Sacramento for Seattle at 11:59 pm (midnight). I remembered there had been major disruptions for maintenance on the UP coast lines and probably the smartest thing I did the whole trip was to call Amtrak and check the status of Train 14 before checking out of the Vagabond and going to the station.
“2-hrs late leaving Santa Barbara, but trains can and often do make up time enroute.”
So we TV-snoozed for an extra hour or so, checked out about 1:30 am Sunday morning, and shuttled over to the station to see the 100 or so people already there who hadn’t called to check Train 14’s status. The place looked like a third-world refugee camp (or any snowed-in airport) with people sprawled all over the place, many taking up 3-4 seats with luggage and sleeping body. We found a place to sit and I went to the ticket window and asked the agent for the latest on our train.
“Oh, you mean the Cost Star-late. It left San Jose 3 hours late. Should be here by 3:15. Get comfortable.”
I explored the old station and trackside. There are few things more enjoyable for me. There’s something tremendously reassuring about an operating RR station in the middle of the night. The track I’m standing beside connects to Union Station in DC, to New York, Nova Scotia, Texas, Florida, Oregon, Minnesota, and Maryville, TN., and although it may be late there’s a train on it coming from Los Angeles CA to take us to Seattle WA, and anywhere else we decide to go. Turnout and block control signals glow clearly and softly, showing the exact path to take through the maze of turnouts, sidings and junctions and when to take it. A couple of Amtrak road engines set peacefully idling on the ready track, waiting their turn on the main line. Three UP freights went by but we insisted on waiting for train 14, the premier long distance train in the Amtrak fleet, the Coast Starlight, successor to SP’s most famous passenger train, the streamlined Daylight. It finally arrived about 3:25am.
Praise GOD, it was worth the wait.”
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