Issue Number 92 – Summer 2025 San Luis Obispo, California ww.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.

A very tall signal

On its first morning in Sam Luis Obispo our former

Southern Pacific maintenance-of-way Chevy pickup truck

shows off its variation of safety-orange paint.

By Brad LaRose

In February the efforts of many friends and former

employees of the Southern Pacific culminated in

probably the railroad’s only remaining early 1970s

Chevrolet 3/4-ton “Longhorn” (extended bed) pickup

truck being placed on display at the Museum.

The railroad once owned hundreds of similar trucks

for maintenance of track, signals, and buildings. The

truck is in good mechanical condition and can be

driven. The truck has its original, black California

license plates and original car dealer’s metal license-

plate frame. The original Chevy owner’s manual was

in the glove box!

Southern Pacific deemed the truck surplus in 1973,

just three years after the railroad purchased it. It was

then bought directly from the railroad by Dan Wolf, a

Southern Pacific locomotive engineer, who drove it for

many years. Mr. Wolf passed away over five years ago

at age 91. The truck was entrusted to his good friend

Steve Rusconi, who cared for its until it was donated to

the Laws Railroad Museum. Eventually, the Laws

museum deaccessioned the truck and Mr. Rusconi

facilitated its donation to our Museum.

Future uses of the truck may include participation

in parades and car shows, sharing another aspect of

Central Coast railroad heritage with a wider audience.

Below, the license plate and the owner manual.

One-of-a-kind truck!

Above, the newly installed train-order signal, seen from

the north (L) and from the south (R). More on pages 4 and 8.

Brad LaRose photo

A steam locomotive boiler from the Swanton Pacific

Railroad was craned into place in March (above). That

SP was a 1/3-size railway on Santa Cruz-area ranch land

managed by Cal Poly. It suffered a devastating fire a few

years ago (Coast Mail Spring and Winter 2020 editions).

Much of the surviving rolling stock went to a nonprofit

group located at the Santa Margarita Ranch. Below, the

freshly painted boiler. See page 4 for more.

A big little boiler!

Coast Mail is published quarterly by

the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum.

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 92 Summer 2025 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

The Museum Store

offers

several items on-site and online: T-

shirts, hats, belt buckles, mugs,

enameled pins, and embroidered

patches. On the website click on

About, then Gift Shop. We also have

an eBay site for more items.

Board of Directors

Peter Brazil Mike Burrell

Stephen Cake Jim Chernoff

Alan Estes Greg Jackson

Brad LaRose Ted Van Klaveren

Crew List

President ..................... Brad LaRose

Vice President................Peter Brazil

Museum Manager........... Alan Estes

Curator/Restoration .. Brad LaRose

Treasurer/Insurance ...... Dave Rohr

Exhibits ............................. Gary See

Operations ................... Mike Burrell

Events/Fundraising ............. vacant

Model Railroad ... Andrew Merriam

Membership ....................... Gary See

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 rail-

roading. 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 Railroad Superintend-

ent for details.

You can join at the Museum, by

mail, or online. Download application

forms from the Museum’s website

and mail payment. Or you can join

online by clicking Membership and

using PayPal.

Timetable

Board of Directors meetings

are scheduled for June 10, July 8,

and August 12, 2025, at 6:00 p.m.

They are held at the Museum.

You can participation online.

Contact info@slorrm.com

for help

with on-line participation.

Narrow-gauge

book bonanza

If you’re interested in

narrow-gauge railroads,

whether in New Eng-

land, Pennsylvania, Colo-

rado, California, or the

Pacific Northwest, see

our latest offerings on

eBay (a few at right).

Annual photo contest

Send us your best photos fea-

turing Central Coast railroading,

including miniature and model rail-

roads. Details on our website. Dead-

line is September 15.

In this publication product

or corporate names may be

registered trademarks. They

are used only for identifica-

tion or explanation without

intent to infringe.

Museum supporters

The Museum would not exist or

improve without the support of many.

All forms of support, from member-

ship dues to grants and donations of

services, expertise, materials, and

funds are greatly appreciated.

In this edition we recognize Joe

Stephenson for his donation of a

Southern Pacific rail saw (page 4).

Mr. Stephenson was a track maint-

enance supervisor, directing the work

of track gangs spanning Monterey,

San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara

counties.

And we thank Louie’s Crane

Service, especially operator Dennis,

for timely and professional moves of

the locomotive boiler and train order

signal (pages 1 and 8).

More Coast Mail online:

Spring visitors; disregarding rules

for a special train; train order signal

excitement.

Above, alternate routes, largely in tun-

nels, for the “Surf Line” near Del Mar,

laid out by Cal Poly civil engineering

grad and Museum member Stephen

Hager (inset photo, from RT&S).

Museum member honored

The April issue of Railway Track

& Structures magazine recognized

Museum member and Cal Poly grad-

uate Stephen Hager as one of 12 out-

standing young engineers nationwide.

Stephen works for the engineering

consulting firm RailPros. A major re-

cent task was laying out alternative

tunnel routes that could bypass coast-

al bluff instability near Del Mar, on

the heavily traveled line between Los

Angeles and San Diego.

SANDAG image

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 3

Because the large rivet shown above was found

below the Stenner Canyon trestle north of San Luis

Obispo it’s almost certainly from that bridge. It was

recently donated to the Museum by Kevin Kirschner.

Unlikely to be a pin for another purpose, the reason for

its length is a mystery. Can a reader provide the answer?

Built in the mid-1890s, the bridge was essential to

connect the Central Coast to the San Francisco Bay

Area and the rest of the world in 1894. It was reinforced

to carry substantially heavier locomotives in the 1920s.

It’s possible to replace tower and span components

without having the bridge collapse under its own

weight, so long as you remove a selected one or a few at

a time, sometimes with temporary support.

The construction and upgrade were done in an era

when every bit of scrap metal was recovered and re-

used or recycled. This piece somehow escaped, probably

by diving into soft soil and being covered by sediment.

These days, bridge and building structural members

are usually bolted rather than riveted, with welding

becoming more common.

Above left, a rivet one inch in diameter and at least 10

inches long, missing one end, likely from the Stenner

Canyon trestle. Above right, rivets through a gusset on

the trestle, about two inches long. Where would a longer

one have been used?

Focus on artifacts

One BIG rivet

Suppressing a fire ... maybe

This fire extinguisher bag with a Southern Pacific Trans-

portation Company logo held water and used a hand-

pumped hose with nozzle. It was found in the truck

featured on page 1.

Your editor recalls visiting the Stenner trestle some-

time in the last 50 years. Memory says there were fire

sprinklers on it, with pipes leading to the ends.

It was probably not a “wet pipe” system that would

discharge automatically. More likely, the water cars

stationed at San Luis Obispo and on a spur track just

beyond the Cuesta Grade summit would have been

positioned at the pipes. Those tank cars with pumps

would have fed the system (Winter 2015 Coast Mail).

While the trestle has always been a steel structure, the

wood ties could burn, and steel can loose its strength if

it gets hot enough from burning ties or vegetation.

A professional contacted for background said the

Honda trestle may have had sprinklers. No one

contacted for information recalled a fire suppression

system actually being used on the Coast Route trestles.

Let us know if you have different information.

SLORRM O2545.1

Responding to fire !

Glowing embers from built-up soot (even from the

exhaust vent of a diesel locomotive); a fragment of a

red-hot brake shoe; tumbleweeds blowing across a

welding site. Combined with creosoted ties, nearby

brush, and remote locations, such incidents could lead to

serious problems. Fire suppression tools included barrels

of water or sand with nearby buckets, pressurized fire

extinguishers, shovels, and the bag shown above, which

was worn backpack-style. The bags typically used what-

ever water was at hand, but they could also use fire-

retardant solutions. Prevention was always the first

line of defense. But once a fire started railroads had a

range of tools to fight it, including tank cars equipped

with pumps. The Winter 2015 Coast Mail featured

water cars and a fire bucket at San Luis Obispo.

Below, a Union Pacific RR crew on a water car protects

the track from a 2018 forest fire in Northern California.

Brad LaRose photo

from a video by Dan Ryant

Be sure to see TSG Multimedia’s new YouTube video

of the Museum’s model railroad.!

This reciprocating rail saw (above) was powered by gas,

with a hacksaw-like blade cooled with water dripping from

a reservoir above. It clamped to the rail to provide steady,

right-angle operation. Current rail saws use rotating disks.

Cutting torches are used only for rail that is being scrapped.

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 4

Southern Pacific’s steam-era automatic block sig-

nals, first semaphores then “target” style color lights,

were tall. But the record holders for height were the

train order signals, often referred to as order boards

because they were simply that, flat panels with no

integral lights. (Some had lamps on or near them to

make the arms more visible, as does the Museum’s.)

With time-table and train-order traffic control, written

train orders were essential for safe movement. They

shared decades with hand-thrown and spring switches

(page 5). Their message was simple: if the arm was

horizontal, a train must obtain a written order or clear-

ance by the station operator before proceeding.

In the illustration above, the indication in A meant

no orders were needed for trains moving in either

direction. In B a train moving toward the signal as

seen by the observer needed an order. In C a train

moving toward the observer needed an order, and in D

trains moving in both directions needed orders. The

default position was both arms horizontal, unless no

operator was on duty, when both arms were down.

More on the

tall

order board

Above left, a diesel-era “cut down” searchlight-style signal

at Oceano; right, a searchlight signal on a semaphore-era

mast; bottom left, a steam-era semaphore; right, the train-

order signal at Guadalupe. All images are about the same

scale. Images are cropped from photos by, left to right and

top to bottom: Tim Zukas, Richard Steinheimer, Fred

Wheeler, and David Martinez.

Reciprocating rail saw

Standing next to a historically accurate, 1/87-size

version of Betteravia, Model Railroad Superintendent

Andrew Merriam outlines the challenges of running a

long train of sugar-beet gondolas to a guest National

Model Railroad Association member.

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 5

The Museum’s Spring Visitors

NMRA PCR operating session

Scouting America!

Mystery on La Cuesta

Sabrina Carelli, Marya Bolyanatz, local DJ Rachel

Joyous, and others found themselves aboard the Museum’s

1926 Pullman for a lively multi-player game of “Murder

On the Orient Express,” as scripted by Masters of Myst-

ery (above). Docent Bob Wilson arranged and played a

role in the March 15 event. What better setting than a

lounge car that can easily be imagined rolling through

a dark and stormy night? Contact the Museum if you

would like to have your own onboard adventure.

In late March National Model Railroad Association

Pacific Coast Region members met in San Luis Obispo.

Part of the multi-day event was an operating session at

the Museum, hosted by the Central Coast Model Rail-

roaders. CCMR member Steve Bohannon (wearing

black hat, below) had scripted the action so engineers

and conductors could re-enact typical Southern Pacific

train movements.

In March boy and girl members of Scouting America

learned about railroads in general and explored Museum

exhibits. An Operation Lifesaver safety presentation is

a key part of the program. Below, scouts received OLS-

themed caps, visited the depot platform, assembled

freight car models, and enjoyed snacks.

San Luis Obispo was a very busy railroad location in

the 1950s, and in the spring of 2025 (above and below).

Three photos by Gary See

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 6

Union Pacific work train

At left and above, in late April Union Pacific

officials and guests aboard a special train toured

the Coast Route from Los Angeles to San Luis

Obispo and back. Arrival and departure at San

Luis Obispo were late evening and early morning.

When the investor-owned railroads operated

their own passenger trains, usually there

were enough general-purpose locomotives on

hand to replace a passenger engine that had

a problem en route. With Amtrak that’s not

so. April 23’s southbound Coast Starlight

locomotive encountered a problem between

Seattle and Port-land, so Burlington North-

ern Santa Fe (BNSF) was called upon to

help. The orange-and-green locomotive stayed

with the train to Los Angeles. Such problems

are not limited to mechanical issues; a

grade-crossing collision that damages lights

also can prevent use.

BNSF substitute

Above, in early May a Union Pacific work train that had

been replacing ties in the southern Salinas Valley paused

at San Luis Obispo.

Below, the two pieces of material-handling equipment atop

the train car can move along the other cars, unloading new

ties or loading old ties for removal and disposal. (Some

electrical power plants can use old ties as fuel.) Short,

hinged beams at the ends of the cars, parallel with the

sides, span the gaps between cars.

More Spring Visitors

Two photos by Christian Schultz

Union Pacific special train

Southwest Railcam image

Have you seen some-

thing out of the ord-

inary, railroad-wise, on

the Central Coast?

Share it with our read-

ership via Coast Mail.

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 7

The train order at right, dated May 14, 1981,

allows an unscheduled Southern Pacific train to

ignore trackside detectors that warn of overheated

axle ends, all the way between San Luis Obispo and

Oakland. What’s up?

The train was Extra 4449 West, headed by the

famous former Southern Pacific Daylight steam loco-

motive. The steam-operated cylinders would have

been about 500 degrees F, while the trackside

detectors were probably set to sound an alarm at

about 250 degrees. Under normal operating rules,

stopping to check for overheated bearings about

every 15 miles would have caused substantial delays.

The bottom photo shows the train the day it

arrived at San Luis Obispo, May 13, 1981. The

locomotive had recently been repainted from its 1976

red, white, and blue America Freedom Train colors.

It had diesel backup and only a few cars, with no

general public riders.

As steam locomotives built 80 or more years ago

have been rebuilt for excursion service, several have

been equipped with on-board bearing monitors, as

well as the latest Positive Train Control technology.

SLORRM Archives series 2172

An exception to the rules, for a good reason

At right, the Museum’s

hot box locator cabinet. The

first detectors only flashed a

light for the crew in the

caboose to see. Later ones

broadcast a recording say-

ing “no defects” plus a

count of total axles and

train speed, or “stop your

train!” and the count to the

overheated axle.

Uncredited photo from the internet

SLORRM Coast Mail Number 92 Summer 2025 Page 8

Our most exciting signal installation so far

Below, the crane’s sling is still connected to the top of the mast. Bottom right,

Brad has released the strap and is returning to Earth, clipping and

unclipping his harness to the ladder every few very narrow rungs.

Louie’s Crane Service expertly lifted the assembled sig-

nal, which had been moved in two sections (above).

Above, the signal was carefully set on

its base and bolted in position. Work-

ers this day included Ken Bennett,

Mike Burrell, Brad LaRose, Gary See,

and Ted VanKlaveren, all of whom

also helped with restoring the signal

and preparing its foundation.

Four photos by Gary See

What our visitors find exciting depends on their interests and exper-

iences. For our volunteer workers, excitement sometimes is more a matter

of how high one must climb while actually doing work, not simply enjoying

the view. In mid-March restoration lead Brad LaRose climbed the train

order signal’s 30-foot mast to remove the sling used to lift and position it.

This signal was donated to the Museum in 2022 by Garry Abbott, trustee

of the James R. Francis & Lea Toeller Estate. Its original location is not

known. Because all trains routinely stopped at San Luis Obispo during the

train-order era, San Luis Obispo never had such a signal.