Trains

Last week at the Whole Earth Festival there was a table set up for the Train Riders Association of California, a group that is working to promote passenger rail service in California. We were definitely interested in their work, since we very much enjoy travelling moderate distances by train. It is quite convenient to take the train to the Bay Area from Davis, since the Amtrak Capitol Corridor line, running from Sacramento to San Jose, has proven quite successful, there now being 12 trains running each direction on weekdays. There is a great deal of interest in California in building a high-speed rail system between the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Southern California, and there will be an important bond measure on the November 2004 ballot to fund this.

Though our interest in trains is mostly as a mode of transportation, the Sacramento area is also an excellent place to be a rail buff. The California State Railroad Museum is nearby in Old Sacramento and every eight years hosts a rail fair gathering train fans, and indeed trains, from several continents. Yesterday we went to a wedding at Hagen Community Park in Rancho Cordova, and discovered that the park was also the home of the Sacramento Valley Live Steamers. They were having a meet that day, with kids and older rail geeks riding tiny steam trains around on 7 1/2” track.

But the rail buffs know a way into the past, into the landscape of the transportation networks of 75 or 100 years ago. An eight-mile bike ride away from here lies the abandoned right-of-way of the Sacramento Northern Railway, an electric interurban railway that opened in 1913, running eventually from Sacramento to San Francisco. The mail box at right commemorates the stop at Saxon, now known mostly as the name of a USGS quadrangle map.