The program for June will be "Slavic Steam Survivors" by Ben Kletzer. With the end of real steam close at hand, Bosnia-Herzegovina is home to the last revenue steam locomotives in Europe. Ben Kletzer takes the viewer on a trip through former Yugoslavia, exploring the photogenic industrial railways home to massive 2-10-0s and tiny narrow gauge tank engines. 

The diverse railway operations in Bosnia include doubleheaded decapods, dual gauge steam switching, manual semaphores, and a double track narrow gauge mainline. Ben has spent his adult life travelling abroad and chasing the last real steam locomotives in the world. In addition to travelling across Asia, Europe and Africa, Ben spent several years living in China amongst real steam and his work has been featured in the Ferroequinologist, Railfan & Railroad and at Winterail. Ben is currently a Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego; his dissertation traces the historical and economic development of Chinese railways.

If you wish to view the meeting, including the monthly presentation, you may do so using Zoom. The link and parameters are below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86214899971
Meeting ID: 862 1489 9971 
+16699006833,,86214899971# US (San Jose) 
+14086380968,,86214899971# US (San Jose) 

Central Coast received a donation of many railroad-related books from longtime member Conrad Gleason. The collection includes about 1000 hardcover books, and another 1000 in soft bindings. We will offer these for sale at the next several Chapter meetings. Since it is not practical to transport all of the books to the meetings, we will bring a small, random subset about 100 to each meeting.

Many of the books are listed online with prices at http://members.trainorders.com/clem.  We will update the list as time permits. If you wish to purchase any of these titles please send an email expressing the title or titles you wish to buy and the date you will be attending a meeting to: central_coast_chapter@yahoo.com.

Meeting Place and Time

(Santa Clara Depot 2/28/2008)

We meet each month at the historic Santa Clara CalTrain depot, 1005 Railroad Avenue, on the 3rd Friday of each month. Doors open at 7:00 and the meeting starts promptly at 7:30pm. Our monthly program starts after a short business meeting. Members and non-members are welcome! Want to do some railfanning prior to your visit?