Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway #2641 stops at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the summer of 1993. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Locale | Santa Cruz County, California, USA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Commercial operations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Built by | Santa Cruz and Felton Railroad | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Original gauge | 3 ft (914 mm) converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preserved operations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Reporting mark | SCBG | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preserved gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Commercial history | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Closed | 1981 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preservation history | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1985 | Started | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Headquarters | Felton | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Website | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
roaringcamp.com/beachtrain.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway( reporting mark SCBG) is operated as a seasonal tourist attraction in Northern California, also referred to as the "Beach Train". Its partner line, the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad, is a heritage railroad.
The Beach Train uses diesel locomotives to haul vintage passenger cars over an 8-mile (13-kilometer) route between Felton, California, and Santa Cruz, California. The SCBT&P is one of very few railroads in North America with extensive street running rails, with trackage in Santa Cruz.
The railway began life as the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad, built between its namesake cities of Santa Cruz and Felton in 1875 to send logs and lumber down from the Santa Cruz Mountains to mills and wharves on Monterey Bay. In 1880, the South Pacific Coast Railroad narrow gauge network completed its line from Alameda to Los Gatos, then over the mountains to Felton, absorbing the Santa Cruz & Felton to complete the line to Santa Cruz.
In 1887, the Southern Pacific purchased the South Pacific Coast and converted it to standard gauge over the course of more than a decade. Washouts closed the majority of the line in 1940, and the Santa Cruz-Olympia section remained in operation to serve the timber and sand industries. In 1981, further washouts brought closure of the line from Eblis to Olympia, until the line was purchased by Norman Clark, operator of the narrow gauge Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad and adjacent 1880s-themed park in Felton. Local legend has it that the name "Roaring Camp" is historical too, coming from the moniker that Mexican authorities gave to what was then, in the 1840s, the wild settlement of Zayante, founded by mountain man Isaac Graham. The first train from Felton to Rincon ran in 1985 (the year after Clark's death from pneumonia that he acquired in his work to reopen this line) and the entire line to Santa Cruz was once again reopened to traffic some time later. Clark’s daughter Melani Jolley-Clark manages the company now.
Trains originate at the Roaring Camp depot in Felton, but the original Southern Pacific Coast depot at New Felton (built in 1880) still stands and serves as administrative offices for the company. The freight shed, constructed from boards salvaged from the Boulder Creek to Felton log flume, is still used by the SCBT&P as a workshop. The original Santa Cruz & Felton never crossed the San Lorenzo River and continued through the middle of the town of Felton.
In August 1990 the railroad re-started limited freight service, moving lumber from Santa Cruz to Felton about twice a month. [1] On April 30, 2021, the railroad took over freight operations on a short section of the Santa Cruz Branch from Watsonville to Pajaro. [2] The railroad uses a pair of CF7s acquired in June 2018 to connect customers in Watsonville to the main rail line at Pajaro. [3]
In January 2022, the railroad was threatened with adverse abandonment following a closed-door meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, alleged to be part of a larger effort to replace the Santa Cruz Branch with a rail trail by two local special interest groups known as Trail Now and Santa Cruz Greenway. [4] [5] During the June primary of the 2022 California elections, a ballot measure, Measure D, was put on the ballot to authorize the railbanking of the Santa Cruz Branch for an "interim trail"; it failed after an overwhelming "no" vote. [6]
The SCBT&P utilizes two former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe CF7 locomotives as its current motive power. These former EMD F7 units were rebuilt by the Santa Fe at their Cleburne, Texas shops to their current, more practical arrangement following the end of passenger service. Both still carry their original ATSF road numbers, #2600 and #2641. In 2013 Locomotive 2641 was named in tribute to Gene O'Lague, a long time Southern Pacific engineer who was one of the original employees of Roaring Camp. A third locomotive, a Whitcomb 45-ton diesel switcher numbered 20, was retired in 1996 and stored; as of August 2022, the locomotive is being restored to operation for work train service. [7] Santa Cruz-Portland Cement #2, an 0-4-0 ST steam locomotive built by H.K. Porter in 1906, has visited the railroad in the past.
In July 2018, two additional CF7 locomotives (#2467 and #2524) were acquired from the Texas Rock Crusher Railroad. [8]
Felton is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The population was 4,489 as of 2020 census and according to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 4.6 square miles (12 km2), all of it land.
The California State Railroad Museum is a museum in the California State Parks system that interprets the role of railroads in the West. It is located in Old Sacramento State Historic Park at 111 I Street, Sacramento, California.
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving mainly forest and riparian areas in the watershed of the San Lorenzo River, including a grove of old-growth coast redwood. It is located in Santa Cruz County, primarily in the area between the cities of Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, near the community of Felton and the University of California at Santa Cruz. The park includes a non-contiguous extension in the Fall Creek area north of Felton. The 4,623-acre (1,871 ha) park was established in 1953.
The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad is a 3 ft narrow-gauge tourist railroad in California that starts from the Roaring Camp depot in Felton, California and runs up steep grades through redwood forests to the top of nearby Bear Mountain, a distance of 3.25 miles.
The Northwestern Pacific Railroad is a 271-mile (436 km) mainline railroad from the ferry connections in Sausalito north to Eureka with a connection to the national railroad system at Schellville. The railroad has gone through a history of different ownership and operators but has maintained a generic name of reference as The Northwestern Pacific Railroad, despite no longer being officially named that. Currently, only a 62-mile (100 km) stretch of mainline from Larkspur to the Sonoma County Airport in Windsor and east to Schellville on the “south end” is operated by Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART), which operates both commuter and freight trains with plans for future extension north to Cloverdale. The “north end” from Willits to Eureka is currently out of service, but saved by 2018 legislation to be converted into the Great Redwood Trail.
The Watsonville Traction Company or Watsonville Transportation Company was a 3 ft narrow gauge, interurban electrified railway in California.
The South Pacific Coast Railroad (SPC) was a 3 ft narrow gauge steam railroad running between Santa Cruz, California, and Alameda, with a ferry connection in Alameda to San Francisco. The railroad was created as the Santa Clara Valley Railroad, founded by local strawberry growers as a way to get their crops to market in San Francisco and provide an alternative to the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1876, James Graham Fair, a Comstock Lode silver baron, bought the line and extended it into the Santa Cruz Mountains to capture the significant lumber traffic coming out of the redwood forests. The narrow-gauge line was originally laid with 52-pound-per-yard (26 kg/m) rail on 8-foot (2.44 m) redwood ties; and was later acquired by the Southern Pacific and converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge.
The Pacific Coast Railway was a 3 ft narrow gauge railway on the Central Coast of California. The original 10-mile (16 km) link from San Luis Obispo to Avila Beach and Port Harford was later built southward to Santa Maria and Los Olivos, with branches to Sisquoc and Guadalupe.
The Ocean Shore Railroad was a railroad built between San Francisco and Tunitas Glen, and Swanton and Santa Cruz that operated along the Pacific coastline from 1905 until 1921. The route was originally conceived to be a continuous line between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, but the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, financial difficulties, and the advent of the automobile caused the line to never reach its goals, and remain with a Northern and Southern division.
Graniterock is an American corporation, founded in 1900 as "Granite Rock", and based in Watsonville, California. It operates in the construction industry providing crushed gravel, sand, concrete, asphalt and paving services.
Eccles, California is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County, near Felton, east of Ben Lomond. It was near where Lompico Creek flows into Zayante Creek.
The Santa Cruz Railroad was a narrow gauge railroad that ran 21 miles from Santa Cruz to Pajaro, California. It started operation in 1874, running from the east bank of the San Lorenzo River to Soquel, California. With completion of a bridge over the San Lorenzo, it began operation over its full length in 1876 and was sold in foreclosure in 1881.
The Swanton Pacific Railroad Society operated an historic one-third scale, 19 in gauge, railroad at Swanton Pacific Ranch in Davenport, California, 15 miles (24 km) north of Santa Cruz, California. The one-mile (1.6 km)-long railroad lies along the Ocean Shore Railroad right-of-way that was to run from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. The scenic trip, through a valley in the coastal mountains, crosses Scott Creek on the Ed Carnegie Bridge, passes a Christmas tree farm, and ends at a wye where passengers observe railroad operations that turn the locomotive.
The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.
The Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay Railroad (SCMB), or Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line (SCBRL), is a historic railway running through Santa Cruz County, California. It once ran operationally from Davenport to the Watsonville Junction where it connected to the Union Pacific Coast Line. Over the years it has had many splays and connections to other local railroads over, through, and around the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is still active today, including a connection with the Roaring Camp Railroads line that makes regular trips between Felton and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The Suntan Special was a summer excursion train service operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California, from 1927 to 1959.
Pajaro/Watsonville is a proposed train station on Caltrain and Amtrak California's Capitol Corridor trains to serve both Pajaro and Watsonville, California. The station is expected to open after track improvements in the area and service commences to Salinas as part of the Monterey County Rail Extension. It will be located in Watsonville Junction near the corner of Salinas Road and Lewis Road, adjacent to the former Southern Pacific Railroad depot and current Union Pacific Railroad office.
The Monterey County Rail Extension is a planned commuter rail extension that would bring Caltrain passenger service south of its existing Gilroy, California terminus to Salinas in Monterey County, using the existing Coast Line owned by Union Pacific (UPRR). Implementation of the rail extension will occur over three phases, starting from Salinas and moving north. When construction is complete, there will be four trains operated over the extended line per weekday: two northbound trains that depart from Salinas and travel to San Francisco in the morning, and two southbound trains that return to Salinas in the afternoon.