Some kids love to play with train sets, sending their careening models over hills, highways and valleys, delighted as the loud whistles signal their locomotive’s ever unstoppable movement.
Some grow into teenagers with those memories deepened even more by their own personal railway experiences, maybe of a past lengthy Pullman sleeper ride, where they recall dozing off as the starry skied countryside rushes past them, punctuated by their temporary home’s grinding, forward-thrusting wheels.
Yet only a very rare few are fortunate enough to translate that youthful delight into an actual working, productively passionate adult obsession.
Time to cue in the undeniable, history-dedicated, train aficionados of our own Western Railway Museum. Over the past 60+ years, they have slowly but steadily created one of the most unique, vibrant and exhaustively accurate living collections of electrically-powered streetcars, trolleys and multi-city rail-bound vehicles found anywhere this side of the Rockies. And it is there for all to revel in.
Facilitated by their large cadre of volunteers, they regularly restore, display and translate that passion for the many visitors to their site. The museum itself is located in a semi-remote, but easily accessible location on Highway 12, between Suisun City and Rio Vista. Still, it’s not hard to miss that big sign on the right as you are lulled into temporary tranquility by the endless miles of marshland and sunbaked sheep and cow-filled pastures that precede your arrival.
“We’re a kinetic, moving, rolling operation, which makes us quite different from some other fine museums that keep all their exhibits behind velvet ropes or under glass,” explains continually multi-tasking super-expert tour guide, train operator and board member, John Krauskopf.
Further describing the place where he works and obviously deeply loves, John sums up the WRM experience as providing a, “fantasy trip back into history that utilizes nearly all your senses as you travel there.”
That noble goal seems to be well on its way towards full realization during two early summer visits, where Local Happenings gets to truly savor the total vast and expansive offerings of rail history education crammed into the central location.
The museum now sports a 2001-opened Visitor Center with gift shop, display hall, and archives featuring thousands of rare photos, magazines, artifacts and books, as well as a research-oriented library open to the public twice a month.
There are also lush picnic grounds, a café and two large houses where some 100 old, but ever vital, train units are on display. Still, for many, the most fun feature is certainly the daily train runs on restored cars using the very same tracks these classic lines traveled on back in the early 1900s.
Such panoply of positive current perceptions wasn’t always evident, though. If you look back at the history of the museum, which is nearly as fascinating as the history it seeks to recreate within its own walls.
The origins of WRM date all the way back to post WWII California, according to Executive Director Phil Kohlmetz. He relates how the 1946 acquisition of just one Oakland Key System street car by a group of electric train enthusiasts chartered for a day-long excursion has inexorably led to today’s fully functioning Solano County rail-based phenomenon.
“They learned that the car they were riding on was to be scrapped in just a week. It was the time when everyone dressed well, wore hats—one of them literally took off theirs, passed it around and collected $250 on the spot to buy it.”
Needing an organization to take ownership of the vehicle, they soon decided to dub themselves the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association, the still-functioning parent group that eventually developed the WRM as their major inevitable continuing project, and the rest is rail history.
Over the next 14 years, they continued to acquire streetcars and interurbans (an electric railway traveling between multiple cities) and stored them in various locations, including rail yards. As mass transit moved more and more toward bus travel, however, these lines began to shut down and they soon demanded that the vehicles be moved out.
Facing the need to find a central and secure location to place them, the group searched high and low, and in 1960 finally settled upon the largely abandoned 22-acre area containing Rio Vista Junction, an important rural transfer stop on the Sac-Northern. The 22 miles of their originally used track were contained on the property, and some of these have since come to life as the later owner, Union Pacific, donated right-of-way privileges for that entire stretch.
Expanding from its humble beginnings, the ever-burgeoning volunteer base eventually built the first pole barn to protect their fragile possessions from foul weather and damaging sunlight.
These efforts were complemented by their designing, constructing and staffing of an all-purpose train restoration shop to help bring damaged but salvageable cars back to display shape, or even to their previous full function. The best looking and most operational of these are now used on the 5 ½ miles of repaired track maintained by another volunteer crew.
Car House 1 now contains up to 30 mostly electric, mostly Western-based units on four sets of tracks, all available for viewing, complete with printed descriptions on many of those vehicles.
Included among the many historically faithful artifacts here are trains from Oakland’s Key Transit System, like articulated Car 187, which between 1939 and 1958 regularly traveled from Berkeley and Oakland over the lower deck of the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Featured as well is the Rail Association’s first acquisition itself, marked as Key Line 271.
A newer Car House 3, hermetically sealed with protective climate and fire control, also claims a large number of invaluable train assets. Tours there take place each Saturday and Sunday provided by the most invaluable docents, like John Krauskopf.
He also often conducts one of the frequent trolley rides beforehand. The 20-minute excursion is frequently held on a completely restored 102-year-old East Bay wooden streetcar, complete with authentic, brightly recreated advertisements from a now bygone 1930-ish era. To help cement the desired effect, Krauskopf himself sports a period-faithful conductor’s outfit.
As for the newer housing unit where John later holds one of the regularly scheduled weekend tours, his creative and colorful rhetoric punctuates the many background stories, exciting his multi-aged audience as he describes the numerous priceless possessions contained here.
Of particular note are a Pullman sleeper car once used by Franklin Roosevelt’s press corps on a West Coast tour, and the electric motor that pulled President William Howard Taft’s private car to the 1911 dedication of a new Oakland City Hall. Also displayed are the steam locomotive featured in the Disney film, Polyanna and Ruth Gordon’s train-based home in Harold and Maude, along with a whole slew of other commuter and long-distance passenger and freight-rail movers.
Typical of this guide’s captivating train-history renderings is his bringing to relevant life one such unique possession: an ice refrigerator freight car. It once hauled newly grown produce all the way from the fruit and vegetable regions of Northern and Central California. Utilized before modern air-conditioning, it was forced to stop at regular intervals to receive new 500-pound ice blocks while moving onward to its final New York destination.
“I grew up in Ohio,” Krauskopf says. “And the reason I had lettuce on my sandwich when I went to school in November was because of cars like this one.”
Similarly ingratiating are the descriptions often presented by 20-year volunteer veteran Enid Alvedi as she takes you on a lengthier train excursion through the Montezuma Hills, using totally restored interurban Peninsular Railway Car 52.
Passing by remnants of the original Rio Vista stop, Enid pauses every few minutes to point out important landmarks along the way. Among these are two centuries presented here side-by-side: on the right, the 1876-rebuilt Shiloh Church and cemetery, and on the left, the huge Shiloh Wind Farm with 100 turbines, which, according to Alvedi, are capable of powering a city the size of Fresno.
Included too in this unique journey is a stop at Gum Grove, site of one of the museum’s premiere yearly events, The Pumpkin Festival, held on the three October weekends prior to Halloween.
Here, hundreds of attendees are ferried back and forth from near the Visitors Center on a sparkling orange historic Bay Bridge unit. The fun event is sponsored by several local Rotary Clubs and includes games for kids, a 40-foot hay bale, complete with tunnels as well as petting zoos, pony rides and, of course, sales of food and pumpkins.
Still one huger yearly museum happening is their special, dressed-up April “Scenic Limited” ride, utilizing authentic and totally restored Sacramento Northern cars. While traversing the same longer daily route, it now also highlights the springtime wildflower-blooming surroundings with an even more ambitious sunset Vintage Comet experience also featured.
Conducted by the Suisun Valley Wine Cooperative, this includes numerous stops along the way where local vintners provide both hors d’oeuvres and tasting of their proudest special blends.
Western Railway Museum is supported by yearly memberships, private donations, endowments and proceeds from admissions and gift shop sales. These are all needed to finance the restorations that often run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars along with building projects that may cost several millions more.
To help them survive and prosper, WRM is always seeking new members and volunteers, the latter to serve on the repair and maintenance crews to work in the archives as docents, in reception and to operate the trains.
Yet, when all is said and done, one can’t help but still remember what really makes this somewhat out-of-the way and definitely out-of-the ordinary railway creation just so special as it plans now to grow into its future.
“Like I said earlier,” John Krauskopf reiterates, trolleying down his well-driven path. “We are a unique museum in motion. That was really evident years back when I, like you, rode this very train as a passenger. Well, as we finished the ride one day the man in front of me looked right at the conductor in complete confusion and asked, ‘So where is the museum?’ The answer he received back was ‘You’re in it!’”
Barely hiding a chuckle, he then adds, “Now, though, thanks to our fully operational Visitor Center which provides so many valuable functions, nobody ever asks us that question again.”
Les Honig is a features freelancer and former journalism teacher from back East who relocated to the OC before landing in Benicia to savor the joys of Northern California living.
