Trip to Sacramento

This last weekend Trudy and I went to Sacramento.  We had a wonderful time in Old Town.  They have the most magnificent Train Museum.  What we had not previously appreciated is that Sacramento is the Western Terminus of the original Transcontinental Railway, that because Sacramento was (and to a limited extend still is) a port city - connecting to the pacific via the Sacramento River.  So rightfully the museum is on that spot where the Transcontinental Railway began from the west.  The Museum has tremendous displays and takes you back in time from the railway's beginnings through the heyday in the 30-50's of the up to the 1960's when air travel started to take its place.

For your Mom's birthday we'll take the train from San Jose to Los Angeles and arrive at the beautiful Union Station.  Something that we had wish we had done while Courtney and Paul lived downtown.

Here's a few fun pictures....  The first is from Old Town

This is the first Locomotive on the transcontinental Railway originating from the West.  It's Engine Number is 1 and named after Stanford.

During the War Years, women were servicing the trains...  Here's your mom posing.

Early on, they learned that they could both transport and sort mail while on the trains.  Here's  a mail car.

And, of course, food service needed a kitchen.  The chefs often came from very prominent hotels and were said to have been paid well.

This enormous "Cab Forward" locomotive was built specifically for the Sierras.  It weighs over 1 Million pounds and has the cab up front so that the engineers don't have to deal with the smoke when going through tunnels and snow sheds.

Diesel Electrics started to replace steam in the 50's not because they had more performance, but did not require water stops, and required far less maintenance.

 This is the inside of a Pullman car, which has wonderful accommodations and nice sleeping rooms.  Here is also one of the very nice train men that portrayed the parts of those that worked the trains in days gone by.

The food service was remarkable in those days.  Beautiful china is here on display,  with many distinctive patterns belonging to each train line.

Upstairs they had a absolutely wonderful set of displays of the history of model and toy trains from as early as 1904.  In this display you can see several of the trains I had when I was a boy.  In particular the Santa Fe diesel engines on the bottom and the red flat-bed with nuclear payload.

We're ready to take any grandchildren (or their parents) at any time!