All Aboard For National Train Day

All Aboard For National Train Day

Celebration in Martinez on May 12

One of the most popular exhibits ever presented at the Contra Costa County History Center, “Before BART: Electric Trains in Contra Costa County”, will be even better this coming Saturday when a 7-inch gauge model of a Sacramento Northern Railway electric engine is on view in the center of the current exhibit.

Members of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society will be on hand to show visitors around the model and to guide them in playing the “railroad switching game”, an intricate model of the actual mechanics used by real railroads to manage the movement of trains and train cars at the switching yards such as the one operated by Union Pacific just west of downtown Martinez.

Game players will find that it is much harder than it looks to move lots of train cars safely and get them to the right industry says John Burgh, a Historical Society board member and co-coordinator of the exhibit.  “You can’t just put ‘em up in the air and drop them in the right place,” says Burgh.  “It’s a hoot” he adds, to watch game players trying to navigate their railroad cars through the signal lights correctly to reach their proper location.

The special exhibit is part of the annual National Train Day observance held each year on the Saturday closest to May 10 which was the day in 1869 when the Golden Spike was pounded into a rail thus completing the first transcontinental railroad line across the United States.

Martinez became a stop on the transcontinental line operated by Central Pacific, later Southern Pacific and linked with Union Pacific in 1878.  Part of the old railroad station still standing at Ferry Street was built in 1877 by the Northern Railway which was a local line owned by Central Pacific and merged into its transcontinental network.  Currently, the Martinez Historical Society and the City of Martinez are working to obtain the funds to restore the building.

Early in the 20th century, electric railways were established to link the East Bay communities with central Contra Costa towns and eventually with Sacramento and Chico.  The exhibit shows pictures of early stations, actual artifacts from the equipment and traces the over half century of passenger and freight service provided county passengers for work, school and recreation.

The Sacramento Northern engine model is owned by railroad society member Eric Moe and will feature signage, headlight and marker lamps and a photograph of the actual car this model is patterned after. Moe has operated the train at Tilden Park and at a 25 mile long railroad park in Oregon where his small engine has actually pulled cars loaded with logs.

The exhibit will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the History Center, 610 Main Street.  Passengers arriving at Martinez Amtrak will receive flyers and a map directing them to the Center and the exhibit.   Admission is free. 

Books on railroads and other subjects of local historical interest will be available for sale.  A free vintage map of Contra Costa County will be given to those who enroll as members of the Contra Costa County Historical Society.