Issue Number 90 – Winter 2024 San Luis Obispo, California www.slorrm.com!
Coast Mail
News from the San Luis Obispo
Railroad Museum
Open Saturdays from 10:00 to 4:00. Other times for
groups by arrangement. 1940 Santa Barbara Avenue.
It’s great to have a truck and crane to move large
and heavy items. When you don’t have them, you
improvise. Above, Ted Van Klaveren (red shirt) and
Equipment & Restoration Superintendent Brad LaRose
are doing so, using hand trucks at each end of the mast
for a grade-crossing signal.
This particular signal and its twin warned drivers
approaching the Camp San Luis Obispo track on Col-
ony Drive, which is now the main entry to California
Men’s Colony (CMC) [Summer 2018 Coast Mail]. CMC
donated them to the Museum about 2005.
Over several workdays in August the restoration
crew prepared, painted, wired, moved, and installed the
two grade-crossing signals along the walkway between
the Freighthouse and the Amtrak depot.
More signals along the Walk of History
Mike Burrell photo
and moving it through the parking lot.
The extent of protection for roads crossing rails
depends on the volume and speed of traffic on the
track and the road. The railroads and local agencies
usually come to agreement based on organization
standards. Possibilities include simple cross-buck
signs, flashing lights with bells, and lights and bells
with gate arms across approaching lanes or all lanes.
At left, if the bolts embedded in concrete align with
the holes on the signal’s steel base plate, we get a
prize. But that’s not all. The crew fed wires from under
the base plate so the lights can be activated.
Colorful lights aren’t just for the winter holidays.
Coast Mail is published quarterly by
the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum.
© 2024. All rights reserved.
Documents Available
Anyone may access the Museum’s
Bylaws, Collections Policy, Develop-
ment & Operations Plan, Code of
Conduct, and other documents at
slorrm.com. Or request a paper copy
via the contact information above.
SLORRM Coast Mail Number 90 Winter 2024 Page 2!
Our Mission
Promote California Central Coast
railroad heritage through commun-
ity participation, education, and his-
toric preservation.
Contact
Telephone (message) 805 548-1894
email: info@slorrm.com
website: www.slorrm.com
Mail: 1940 Santa Barbara Avenue
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Museum Store
To raise funds, the Museum offers
several items for sale on-site and
online: T-shirts, hats, belt buckles,
mugs, enameled pins, embroidered
patches, and engineer hats. On the
website click on About, then Gift
Shop. We also have an eBay site for
a wider range of items.
Board of Directors
Peter Brazil Mike Burrell
Stephen Cake Jim Chernoff
Alan Estes Ken Green
Greg Jackson Brad LaRose
Ted Van Klaveren
Crew List
President ...................... Peter Brazil
Vice President...............Mike Burrell
Museum Manager.. Diane Marchetti
Curator, Restoration .. Brad LaRose
Treasurer/Insurance ...... Dave Rohr
Exhibits ............................. Gary See
Operations ................... Mike Burrell
Events .....................................vacant
Model Railroad .... Andrew Merriam
Membership ....................... Gary See
Fundraising ...........................vacant
Digital Media Coordinator Gary See
Webmaster ................ Jamie Foster
Secretary, Archivist/Librarian, News-
letter Editor ............... Glen Matteson
(newsletter@slorrm.com)
The museum is a 501(c)(3) non-
profit, educational organization,
staffed entirely by volunteers.
Become a member
Membership provides opportune-
ities for anyone interested in today’s
railroads, railroad history, train tra-
vel, artifact restoration, or model
railroading. Membership benefits
include free Museum admission and
a 10% Museum Store discount.
Annual dues: Individual $40;
Family $65; Sustaining $100. Life
member single payment: under 62
$1,000, 62 and over $600. Junior
memberships (ages 12-18) for model
railroaders are available; contact
our Model RR Superintendent.
Application forms can be down-
loaded from the Museum’s website
and mailed with payment. Or you
can join online: click Membership
and use PayPal.
Timetable
Board of Directors meetings
are scheduled for Dec. 10, 2024, and
Jan. 14 and Feb. 11, 2025, at 6:00
p.m. They are held at the Museum.
You can participation online. Con-
tact info@slorrm.com
for help with
on-line participation.
Correction
The Fall Coast Mail print edition
on page 3, caption lower left, called
our concrete telephone booth a photo
booth. Not even close. Your editor
blames an autocomplete system too
young to remember telephone booths.
But do photo booths still exist?
A railfan and his long-suffering wife
at the phone/photo booth (below).
SLO webcam is live
Thanks to SouthWest RailCam:
youtube.com/watch?v=S2YHsgINOF8
In this publication product or corporate
names may be registered trademarks.
They are used only for identification or
explanation without intent to infringe.
Loss of a member
Museum volunteer Tom Grozan
passed away several months ago.
Tom, often in the model railroad area,
was one of our most pleasant to work
with members.
Recently, Tom’s wife Debbie do-
nated dozens of railroad books from
his collection. The books span the
railroad world, including several col-
lector’s editions focusing on narrow-
gauge lines. Most are offered for sale
to support Museum efforts, in mem-
ory of Mr. Grozan.
Below, Tom Grozan at the Holly-
wood, Florida, Amtrak depot.
Museum supporters
The Museum would not exist and
could not improve without the sup-
port of many. All forms of support,
from membership dues to grants and
donations of expertise, materials,
and funds are greatly appreciated. In
this edition we recognize David Swift
of Sharp & Fellows Company, for
donating a pneumatic spike driver.
Santa on the Surfliner
Santa is scheduled to arrive on
Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner on Sat-
urday, December 7, at about 12:30.
Walk with Santa from the station to
the museum, where admission will
be free while Santa is there.
Gary See photo
More Coast Mail Online
Pages 5 and 6: signal eyes; special
blue light; RIP office work; UP imi-
tators; solid benches; east SLO.
SLORRM Coast Mail Number 90 Winter 2024 Page 3!
Editor’s note: As introduced in the Fall Coast Mail, the Museum’s
modelers are reproducing in miniature many of the features, large
and small, that made up the Southern Pacific Railroad’s locomotive
servicing facilities in San Luis Obispo. This is the second part of
Andrew’s explanation of that work.
by Andrew Merriam,
Model Railroad Superintendent
The sand house model was built in 2008
from photos and Southern Pacific plans in the
archives of the California State Railroad
Museum in Sacramento. The heavy framing
wood is weathered and distressed. Many
vertical framing members had rotted, so they
had to be replaced by short struts driven into
the ground and bolted to the existing mem-
ber. The metal roof had rusted and worn over
time, exposing the wood below. The new sand
supply pipes required the addition of a
vertical support at the northeast end of the
sand house.
Central Coast Railroad Festival
2024 photo contest winners
This 1/87th (HO scale) model of the railroad’s sand house in San
Luis Obispo shows why builder and photographer Andrew Merriam
has earned the distinction of being a Master Model Railroader from
the National Model Railroad Associations (NMRA). This view is
from the west side and looking up as if there is no ground.
Modeling Southern Pacific’s Engine Facilities at SLO
At right: Third Place, “Night Run,” by Catherine Evans, in
March 2019.
Above: First Place, “Through the Rails” by Kathleen Bosch;
from the Jennifer Street Bridge in San Luis Obispo in Sep-
tember 2023.
Above right: Second Place, Russell B. Sperry caught former
Southern Pacific 4449 on the American Freedom Train in April
1977 on the Rio Hondo trestle northwest of Santa Barbara.
Excess adhesion sand, RailSystems.net image
!
SLORRM Coast Mail Number 90 Winter 2024 Page 4!
Modeling SP’s SLO roundhouse!
PCRy cars in Alaska!
by Karl Hovanitz
Eighty years after the last train ran on the Pac-
ific Coast Railway, few large pieces of rolling stock
exist. But in PCRy’s twilight years, just after the
Railway & Locomotive Historical Society’s 1937
excursion, four narrow-gauge passenger cars were
loaded on standard-gauge flatcars near Southern
Pacific’s SLO roundhouse. Their destination was
nearly 3,000 miles north.
They were sold early in 1938 to the White Pass
& Yukon Railway. The WP&Y, completed in 1900,
connected Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse in the
Yukon Territory of Canada, 110 miles apart. It
carried metallic ores as well as passengers, includ-
ing a growing number of tourists.
The three PCRy coaches and one baggage car
would help meet summer travel demands. They had
been built in 1893 by the J. Hammond Car Comp-
any of San Francisco, which also built many of that
city’s famous cable cars. On the PCRy they replaced
cars destroyed in the 1892 coach shed fire at San
Luis Obispo [Summer 2015 Coast Mail].
The WP&Y converted the baggage car to a parlor
car and replaced coach-type seating in the other
cars with parlor car seating. The WP&Y eventually
made other changes to all the cars, including steal
frames, and updated windows, brakes, and trucks
(wheel assemblies). Today they operate inter-
changeably with over 80 similar cars. Due to their
lighter wood construction they often are included in
trains powered by steam locomotives.
Below, this tourist train in Alaska may include a
former Pacific Coast Railway car.
Four of the five Pacific Coast Railway cars shown on
the Port Harford pier during a 1937 excursion are
still in service on the distant White Pass & Yukon Ry.
Among the interesting features Bob found:
•
The roundhouse had 17 stalls, with stalls 11 and 12
used for a while as a machine shop.
•
The southern wall was wood while the northern wall
was brick.
•The entire back wall was brick.
Bob used Computer Aided Drafting to draw plans for
the more than 200 building elements, which he is laser
cutting and 3-D printing. He made a test model to confirm
the shapes and sizes of the major parts before creating and
assembling them.
Above and below, the roundhouse model being assembled.
These small photos do not do justice to the details. Come see
them yourself.
Southern Pacific’s roundhouse in San Luis Obispo was
an essential and dominant part of the engine servicing
facilities from 1894 into the 1950s. At the division point
midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco steam
locomotives on through trains were often changed, with
those coming off duty receiving maintenance or minor
repairs. Also, for several decades, locomotives for trains
based out of SLO were serviced here. Those needing major
work went to Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area.
As Bob Schrempp, a key member of the Museum’s Cen-
tral Coast Model Railroad group said, “Where do you start
when you want to build an accurate scale model of a
building that was torn down over 60 years ago?” His
answer: research, research, and more research. He looked
at every book on the Coast Route that he could find, as well
as Google searches and consulting other fans and modelers
of the SP. The modelers’ goal is a structure reflecting 1950.
Bob Schrempp photo!
Shore Excursions Group image!
SLORRM Coast Mail Number 90 Winter 2024 Page 5!
Not on the Central Coast,
but oddly familiar!
The cars on the right display a weathered version of
Armour yellow, gray roofs, and a red base band, imitating
Union Pacific Railroad’s passenger colors. Maybe they’re
business cars recently demoted to maintenance-of-way ser-
vice. But the red band is much too wide and their roofs are
excessively arched, perhaps the product of a distorting lens.
Not so. We’re at Perusic on a Croatian Railways line
between Zagreb and Split. The scene is from a YouTube
video by Railway Relaxation. While the line shows recent
upgrading, including new bridges and ballast, one wonders
how much longer such relatively lightly used, non-electrified
routes will sustain passenger service. It appears that
calcite, in the limestone family and used in manufacturing
cement and other products, is a main source of revenue. If
you like mountains and valleys, this is a great virtual ride.
I spy, with my little eye, more eyes
Do you sometimes feel that glassy eyes are watching you
as you go along the Walk of History?
These are indicator lights on signals [See Coast Mail
Fall 2024 and page 1 of this edition.] The image at left
above shows part of the block signal. A light inside the
relay-cabinet base showed that electrical power was avail-
able for the mechanism. At right above we see small port
windows in the sides of the crossing signal heads, each with
its own little visor. The warning lights face left and right in
this image. Approaching train crews could tell if the flash-
ers were working by watching for the flash visible ahead.
The electromagnetic relays and incandescent bulbs in
signals of this vintage have been replaced by transistors
and light-emitting diodes, some with wireless status reports.
Focus on artifacts:
You can do a lot with air
We now have on display an air compressor of the
kind used by Southern Pacific (below). Compressed
air can be used to drive spikes, apply and remove
track bolts, compact ballast, and grind off rough
spots. Hoses connected the compressor to various
devices. This particular tool came from the Denver
& Rio Grande Western Railroad (“Mainline of the
Rockies”), which combined with Southern Pacific in
1988. It has three power cylinders and three
compressing cylinders, arranged radially like an
aircraft’s propeller engine.
Brad LaRose restored and donated this artifact.
Recent history:
Amtrak inspection train
During the last week in September Amtrak ran
an inspection train along the coast. It spent the
night at San Luis Obispo. As seen above, Brad
LaRose caught it resting on the pocket track that
was used by helper locomotives in previous decades.
This short train consisted of a new Siemens Charg-
er locomotive painted to commemorate Amtrak’s 50th
anniversary, two coaches, and a former General
Motors F-40 locomotive with its engine removed but
its controls intact, to serve as a cab plus baggage
space (often referred to by railfans as a cabbage).
!
SLORRM Coast Mail Number 90 Winter 2024 Page 6!
Messy and smelly?
Here’s! another! model! scene! best! appreciated! in! person.! No,!
the! stock! pens! in! the! right! distance! don’t! really! smell.! But! the!
salvage!yard! at!left!won’t!get!an! Obispo!Beautiful! award.! !This! is!
an!accurate!depiction!of!!“east!San!Luis!Obispo”!in!the!1950s.!The!
location! near! Orcutt! Road! would! be! called! “south”! of! the! depot!
today.! But! on! the! model! railroad,! Southern! Pacific! timetable!
directions!–east!was!away!from!San!Francisco–!prevail.!
Substantial benches
One advantage of restoration lead Brad LaRose
being at the Museum so often is catching railroad
work in progress. In this case, it was Amtrak re-
moving concrete benches from the depot grounds.
With help from Amtrak’s contractors and Museum
volunteers, two surplus benches were moved to
locations near the Freighthouse. Our facility has
become an informal stopping place for Flix busses,
as well as neighborhood walkers. Now passengers
and passersby can sit a spell (other than on steps).
San Luis Obispo’s special blue light (white arrow) stands
tall, with signals controlling exit from the Amtrak layover
track and the pocket track for helper locomotives to the right,
and the historic water tank and palm trees to the left.
Blue Light Special
Present at least since the 1980s, a blue strobe light sits
atop a tall poll opposite the San Luis Obispo depot. It indi-
cates when a train occupies the Orcutt Road grade crossing
about 1.7 miles to the southeast. Some with knowledge of
the light’s history say its flashing warns rail workers near
the depot when a train approaches. Others say that, more
importantly, when it stops flashing the crew of a long north-
bound train knows it no longer blocks the crossing. There
are various explanations involving train speeds and sounds,
and crossing distances, for why there’s not a similar indi-
cator for Foothill Blvd. or Marsh St. After being disconnected
for several years, the strobe was recently reconnected.
Repair-In-Place office work
The RIP office is shaping up nicely, due to efforts
by Mike Adams (in gray shirt) and Mike Burrell,
shown below, Ted Van Klaveren, and others.
Brad LaRose photo
Brad LaRose photo